


Daemonology

by dehautdesert



Category: Da Vinci's Demons
Genre: Abuse, All The Daemon Cliches, Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemons, Friendship, Multi, Non Consensual Daemon Touching, POV Multiple, Psychological Trauma, Violence, canon pairings - Freeform
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-22
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-02-05 19:55:30
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 41,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1830301
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dehautdesert/pseuds/dehautdesert
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Da Vinci's Demons... with daemons.</p><p>  <em>"Florence is a city of the exotic; a place where strange and mysterious beasts are allowed to roam the streets without fear of scrutiny from church or state. Of their circle of friends, Nico's daemon is the least unusual. Leo and Vanessa have their birds, and Zoroaster's was some kind of small gold monkey. The Medici are also anything but ordinary in that regard, and there's strange creatures aplenty in Leo's workshop. Every time you walk the streets of Florence you can see animals you've never seen before, and be amazed."</em></p><p>UPDATE 07/02/2015: New stuff, because I couldn't help myself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Daemons

**Author's Note:**

> Well, I know it's a small fandom, but I can't believe no one's written a daemons fanfic yet! It's in the title of the show! Alternatively, someone has written one and I just haven't found it. But, whichever it is, this void in my life has forced—yes, forced me to inflict this on anyone who chooses to click on it. It's your own fault for not writing one first, fandom! And the show's fault, for taking over my mind while being too obscure!
> 
> On a slightly more serious note, I haven't read His Dark Materials in about a billion years, and I didn't like it that much when I did read it anyway. However, I have read copious amounts of daemon AU fanfic, and many of those have made up stuff concerning daemons, which doesn't bother me in the slightest and so I am assuming it will not bother anyone who reads past this note. Skip to the end to know who has what type of daemon and what their (completely made up) names are!
> 
> Cookies for anyone who spots the MST3K reference. :)

 

 

 

"Come on, Leo, stop it!"

"Maestro, she's getting too far away, bring her back!"

"Leo, this isn't funny!"

His friends are afraid for him, as usual. Leonardo doesn't begrudge them this fear entirely; he knows they care for him. The proof of their love flourishes in these little seemingly mundane actions, and part of him thinks that if he could somehow paint that love into one of his commissions it would be a commission no one could stop him from completing, because if everyone in the world could see that painting he thinks it could work miracles.

But they don't see the way he sees. They don't feel the way he feels. They'll never understand why he and Silestrana have to do this.

Of course, her friends are calling too.

"Get back down here, you daft cunt, you're going to kill yourselves!"

"Silestrana, please come down!"

"Maybe I should try to go up and get her... ?"

That last suggestion from Sheymir pulls Leonardo out of his reverie. The tightness in his chest had felt like the stretch of a disused muscle; painful, yes, but necessary for the better things to come. However, he can't put Vanessa in that position by allowing Sheymir to follow Silestrana. She feels things differently, after all—she'll be hurt, and that's not worth the exhilaration.

"No need," he gasps, pulling himself up. "It was time to stop anyway."

Silestrana doesn't think so. Silestrana might have let Sheymir try to reach her heights anyway and trusted that he'd go back to Vanessa when it became too uncomfortable for them. It's strange, because Silestrana and Leonardo should be the same person, but he thinks she underestimates how much his friends care about him.

He worries he overestimates what they mean to her, and thus that he might not really be the kind of man he sees himself as. But maybe everyone has those worries, even people who aren't geniuses. Silestrana returns to him, however reluctantly, and he breathes a sigh of relief to stem the nausea from her sudden arrival.

There are sighs of relief all round. Kerrickatte scampers down Zoroaster's shoulder so she can jab Silestrana roughly on her wing, and hiss at her.

"What the hell were you playing at, flying so far away from your human, you fucking idiot!?"

Nico raises his arms in a conciliatory fashion and his daemon Lontalye moves towards Kerrickatte in tandem while he speaks. "I'm sure Maestro is all right," he says.

"All right?" Zo repeats incredulously. "I thought he was supposed to be a fucking genius. Pulling a stunt like that either loses him that title on the spot or means he's inhaled something bad enough that having the idea to smoke it lost him that title on the spot. Fuck's sake, Leo."

Leonardo lies back against the sack cloth he's sitting on, closes his eyes and brushes his hand in Zo's direction like he's trying to shoo a buzzing fly away. Silestrana doesn't make a sound, but in his mind he hears her chuckling.

"It's just Leo being Leo," sighs Vanessa.

He almost has to fight off a grin for that pronouncement. The dizziness he felt from stretching his bond with his daemon so far and pulling her back so quickly dissipates, and he replies—

"All of Florence deserves to see the beauty of the most extraordinary daemon in the world. Would any of you truly feel right in denying our fellow citizens my magnanimity?"

As he expected, this draws a loud and spiteful laugh from Zo, a roll of Nico's eyes and a small giggle from Vanessa. Then Zo steps forward with one hand on his hip and leans over him.

"Silestrana isn't even the most extraordinary daemon amongst the four of us," he taunts, and only allows enough time for Leonardo's jaw to drop before he goes on. "Sheymir may not be quite as flash, but he's a prettier shape and shade and his tails catch the eye more than your eyesore-bright colours do."

He's addressing Silestrana directly; a bold move—some might consider it over-familiar, but Leonardo doesn't see how he could get any more familiar with Zo unless he laid a hand on Katte, and that idea was far more ridiculous than testing the boundaries of his bond on such a regular basis. He and Zo weren't lovers (currently) but their love is just as strong, and Silestrana enjoys the attention, if not the implication.

"Hmm, maybe Zo has a more discerning eye than you do, Leonardo," Vanessa says, laughing as she looks at her Sheymir and he ruffles his turquoise and black feathers proudly in response. Silestrana huffs with indignation and Katte sniggers at her. Nico and Lonty look a little lost—bless them.

"You're just jealous of her 'eyesore-bright' colours," Leo says lightly. "Maybe if you bathed more often, Katte's fur would glow a little brighter too."

Zo moves in for an attack entirely lacking in hostility before Leo can get through the end of his sentence, which had been difficult enough while he was trying so hard not to laugh, and Silestrana flutters away before he accidentally knocks into her. In fact, she rises all the way up onto the roof of the building he's lying in front of, and makes Lonty whine in panic.

"No, Silestrana, come back!" she cries, and Leo laughs again, even though stretching their bond even that far so soon after the last stretch tugs at something in the centre of his spine.

"Oh, relax, Lonty," Silestrana calls back. "I'm just surveying the rest of the competition. Perhaps I'll find a daemon more beautiful than Sheymir and I put together."

Her head cocks this way and that, and she whistles, as Zo and Leonardo continue to wrestle on top of the sacks of grain. Vanessa stands back with her arms folded and Nico takes one look at her before copying her pose, while Lonty tries to keep her tongue in her mouth so she can mimic their attempts at being imposing. Leonardo loves every second of it.

Then, all of a sudden, Silestrana goes stock still. She stops hopping along the top of the roof and Leonardo knows, _knows_ , she's seen something that could very well change everything. And had he been the type to actually extrapolate possible consequences, rather than just seeing where his imagination would lead him, he might have taken the moment he stopped fighting Zo and relaxed to think about what he was going to do.

Only, Leonardo isn't that person. Leonardo is Silestrana, bold and bright, and unafraid, and he thinks (thought, will think—time is a river) that it will always be that way. Leonardo has already made up his mind to meet whatever Silestrana's seen before he even knows for sure that they exist.

"Over there," Silestrana points him, and he sees the flower stall on the other end of the plaza; men in Medici livery and a woman in black and purple with a bird daemon on her shoulder.

The daemon is nothing like Silestrana, nor like Sheymir. Leonardo has no name for either his or Vanessa's daemons except what they were given at birth, those birds are from lands so far away he's never seen their likenesses even in bestiaries, but he recognises the daemon that has caught Silestrana's attention at once.

"No, Leo," says Zo—because he recognises the woman, not the bird. "No, no, no, this makes the whole testing how far you can stretch your bond thing seem clever by comparison."

"Who is she?" asks Vanessa.

Leonardo knows why there's confusion in her voice, and it's not just because she doesn't know who the woman is. Vanessa first caught Leonardo's attention from a similar distance; because of Sheymir, and his metre-long tails. Having a daemon like Sheymir could make Vanessa look like a queen even if she was wearing nothing but one of the sacks they were sitting on.

This woman's daemon is drab by comparison. Not the most drab of birds, but still his feathers are awashed monochrome, striped along the chest and belly, and he's not small, but he's not big either. And yet there is something there, and even if Leonardo isn't sure exactly what it is yet, he still trusts his own and Silestrana's intuition enough to know that this is big.

"Lucrezia Donati," Zo says, despairingly. Then, more aimed at Leonardo by the sound of his exasperation, "Lorenzo de Medici's mistress?"

That is mildly interesting. But the daemon is even more so.

He's a _cuckoo_.

"Some cultures," Silestrana reminds him, "believe that cuckoos call forth spring."

It's always time for spring in Florence. The spring of new life, brought forth in the form of ideas every minute of the day. The celebrations Leonardo and Silestrana enjoy with the people they care about, and who care about them.

This cuckoo is here to call forth something else entirely, and Leonardo wants to know what. If he was someone smarter, and someone less intelligent, he'd be content to assume what anyone would about a woman who is also a cuckoo. But he's Leonardo da Vinci, and he is also Silestrana. She wants to know this intriguing pair, and he will not deny her.

It later transpires that it is not the fact that Lucrezia's daemon is a cuckoo that has pulled Leonardo and Silestrana to her.

It's that he used to be something else.

 

 

Kalaiola does not like Lucrezia.

It shouldn't bother her so much, not really. It shouldn't fill her with the fear it does. (What if it means she's not being convincing enough? What will Lorenzo do to her if he finds out? What will Riario?)

It's not even only fear that fills her, because the idea of becoming too attached to Lorenzo or Lorenzo becoming too attached to her frankly makes her want to start sobbing out tears she thought she'd cried away long ago, and that's not likely to happen as long as Kalaiola remains so distant.

Except it's more than distance, it's avid dislike. And she shouldn't be so bothered, because Kalaiola dislikes everyone.

For countless people a daemon acts as a voice of reason. Since it's so widely accepted that they can be used as a personal conduit to God, many are advised to trust in their daemon's opinion, especially when they counsel against rashness. Often daemons seem to feel less for other people (earthly attachments) than their humans, thus it is believed they have better perspective when it comes to interpersonal relationships.

Lucrezia knows Madrolore is one such daemon. She well remembers his encouragement for her to not let Amelia and Enoch's deaths push her into despair. His gentle, if fear-filled reminders that she is doing what she has to do. He distracts her from the dark paths when her emotions lead her too far down them.

For Lorenzo, however, it seems to be the opposite. Kalaiola is the emotional one; the vicious one. Kalaiola espouses impetuousness and violence. Kalaiola rushes into fights at the slightest provocation. Lorenzo is the one that has to hold her back, for the sake of the bank, and his family. Lorenzo is the one who grits his teeth and struggles to keep that part of himself under control.

Now Lorenzo laughs and strokes her hair, while across the room Kalaiola paces back and forth angrily, and throws Madrolore dirty looks at every opportunity. Lorenzo sees the look on her face, and his smile turns bitter.

"Don't mind her, dearest," he tells her. "The whole affair with that snake Riario's had her snapping at everything that moves and a lot that doesn't too, the brute. That poor dining chair never harmed anyone before you dashed it into pieces."

With a roar, Kalaiola bounds towards them and Lucrezia extricates herself from Lorenzo's arms with all haste. Madrolore flutters down onto her shoulder for comfort as Lorenzo grabs both of Kalaiola's paws and holds her away from him as she bares her fangs.

It's fascinating and terrifying to watch. Lorenzo looks unconcerned, smiling, but Lucrezia sees the huge leopard attacking her... whatever Lorenzo is to her, and can't help but fear for him. Kalaiola yells furiously.

"Are you really going to worry about a chair when the fate of this entire city has been put in the hands of an obnoxious lunatic whose own father warned us against him!?"

"What's your plan?" asks Lorenzo, face twisting quickly into anger. "Go out and fight Riario yourself? I'm sure Isilence would join you; and perhaps you could use Madrolore to back you up, it would make as much difference!"

Something feels wrong when Lorenzo refers to Madrolore by name. It implies a closeness between them that exists only in his mind. And yet, that's hardly his fault.

"Let him call me whatever he likes," Madrolore whispers. "It's no bother. You used to love to hear your friends call me by name."

_That was back before you changed_ , Lucrezia tries not to think; but Madrolore knows what's in her heart, and she feels his sadness.

She had been happy with her daemon before she saw her father dragged away screaming, before she received her 'instructions' as Riario called them, before Enoch shattered into a cloud of golden dust—so abruptly that it had happened in the midst of a shift, and white wings had been growing out of his little dormouse's back just before he vanished. Amelia had been so sure he'd settle as a dove, and so happy that they'd both have birds, like their father.

That had been before Madrolore traded the soft brown feathers of a nightingale for the grey and white stripes of a cuckoo. It was her weakness that changed him, she knows it, but he is a constant reminder of that and some days she can't bear to look at him.

Yet her disappointment in Madrolore for changing shapes seems nothing next to the conflict Lorenzo enjoys with Kalaiola; and she means 'enjoys', because when they're not actually fighting they work together as much in sync as anyone who truly knows themselves.

"I'd send Madrolore, Hilensius, and that fucking rainbow-vomiting chicken your _Artista_ carts around, load them into a cannon and fire them at Riario's slimy head if it would help protect Florence," Kalaiola hisses viciously, "And even if it didn't I might do it anyway if I didn't think I could get you close enough to spit in his face!"

Lucrezia almost volunteers Madrolore for that plan as soon as Kalaiola finishes her sentence, but even in jest the thought of losing Madrolore along with everything else makes her knees buckle, and now is not the time to be jesting in front of Kalaiola, no matter how much it pleases her to imagine a cannon taking Riario's head off.

She's surprised that the leopard mentions Hilensius though. Like many noble couples, Lorenzo and Clarice's daemons are largely indifferent to each other, but knowing Kalaiola that indifference has seemed almost affectionate by comparison. She's merciless to Giuliano's Isilence, which troubles Lucrezia far more than it should because she can't help but think that if Amelia were still alive, if some miracle let her sister walk the earth again, she'd never treat her like that, nor would Madrolore bully Enoch so.

Kalaiola snaps at Lorenzo's daughter's daemons almost as often; and just the other day she'd swatted Silestrana off a table and pushed her into the floor. She even growls at Lucrezia now and then, and Lucrezia can't help but fear those looks she gives Madrolore. With Lorenzo so affectionate towards her she can't help but wonder what Kalaiola's distaste means.

However, Hilensius never seems to suffer from Kalaiola's wretched temper. Perhaps Lorenzo's distaste for Clarice is buried so deeply that even Kalaiola refrains from acting on it in public; and that suggests to Lucrezia that it's worth exploiting—only she doesn't know how, because she's not Riario and it disgusts her that she's beginning to think like him.

"We don't have to tell him," Madrolore whispers.

Lucrezia doesn't get a chance to answer over Lorenzo's growled retort to his daemon.

"Florence doesn't need her leader attacking himself like this."

Kalaiola pushes away from him violently.

"Florence needs our head to be clear and focussed on her needs. Thanks to you and Cosimo, she's all we have."

" _Don't_ start that again!"

Lorenzo bellows the first word of that sentence, but calms himself somewhat between that and the second. Perhaps if Lucrezia could bring herself to listen to Madrolore's advice, she'd know enough about Lorenzo to know what he was talking about.

Of course, Madrolore had also advised her not to become Riario's informant, but to find a way to fight against him somehow, and she hadn't been brave enough for that either.

That, she sometimes thinks, is why Kalaiola has such special distaste for her. It's not a logical conclusion, but one based on Lucrezia's intuition, or maybe on her shame—that Kalaiola senses her constant fear and finds her undeserving of respect. Often Lucrezia agrees with her. Sometimes she wishes Lorenzo agreed with himself about her too.

"Not in front of Signora Donati, Lai," he continues. Then he turns to Lucrezia. "Ignore her. I'm sure you know what's going on. Ever since Becchi... well, you don't need to hear it."

Lucrezia knows what her response to that must be.

"There's no need to hold anything back from me."

He doesn't. Kalaiola growls the entire time he is confiding in her.

Weeks of fear and misery later, as she takes the opportunity to dispatch the clergymen trying to dispose of Clarice and her daughters while they're still hesitating before Hilensius' roars, she finally understands that Kalaiola had never suspected her true intentions for a moment.

Across the cathedral floor, Isilence vanishes the same way Enoch had, drawing the attention of everyone nearby for a split-second when such a huge presence is suddenly gone. Lorenzo doesn't see it; Leonardo is dragging him away with his hands pressed tight against him to try and stop his bleeding, but Kalaiola does.

Lucrezia can't say she's heard a leopard scream before. But she remembers Madrolore's so normally calm voice shrieking in her ear, almost before she'd realised that monster had killed her sister, and Kalaiola sounds just like that now; at least in every way that counts.

And Lucrezia understands that Kalaiola had never disliked Isilence, or Giuliano, or Hilensius, or Leonardo, or maybe even her and Madrolore. She just needs Florence to be safe, more than anything in the world.

Lucrezia sees her stretch the bond she has with Lorenzo enough that Lorenzo falls to his knees as she tries to climb over the pews to reach Giuliano. But she and Lorenzo are probably dying too, and they don't have the strength to make it. As Lucrezia leads Clarice and the girls out of the building, Silestrana flaps her way onto Kalaiola's back, buries her talons in the leopard's skin, and begins to pull her away...

And then they're out of sight. But Lucrezia still hears Kalaiola screaming, and Madrolore is silent on her shoulder.

She's never felt so guilty in her life.

 

 

Florence is a city of the exotic, even for those who've lived there all their lives. It's like no other place Zoroaster has ever been to, because in most places most daemons settle on a form that resembles the local wildlife. Not so in Florence, where strange and exotic beasts are allowed to roam the streets without fear of scrutiny from church or state.

Of their circle of friends, Nico's daemon is the least unusual, and even then Zoroaster has never seen a dog like Lontalye before, a dog that looks more like a lamb than a dog, with that weird cushion of fuzz on the top of her head. He remembers joking that she'd be a 'wolf in sheep's clothing' the day she settled.

As if there was anything wolf-like about Nico.

Leo and Vanessa have their birds, the large bright red, yellow and blue Silestrana that Zoroaster almost imagines is a outward expression of Leo's palette, and the pretty blue-green and black beauty with tail-feathers like the ribbons Vanessa loved to put in her hair. Zoroaster's own Kerrickatte was some kind of small gold monkey he'd only seen once before; and that was as someone else's daemon.

The Medici are also anything but ordinary in that regard, and there's strange creatures aplenty in Leo's workshop; so many that poor Verrocchio's doe daemon Dialanya almost looks out of place amongst them. Every time you walk the streets of Florence you can see things you've never seen before, and be amazed.

That's why he knows the sick feeling that goes all the way to the seat of his soul when he looks at Vlad Dracula's daemon is nothing to do with it being in a form he's never seen before.

No. There is something obscenely wrong about her.

"Oh, you've noticed Xarella, have you?" the Impaler asks him. "Xarella, come and greet our guests. They have travelled a long way."

_He can't be real_ , Zo is thinking. Those eyes can't be the eyes of a real person. That daemon can't really exist outside of lurid ghost stories. That's some kind of pagan fairytale Leo almost got in trouble for drawing, not a real man's soul!

"Greetings," says the creature that can't exist. Then she bursts out laughing in a way that makes it sound like she's never heard laughter before, only read about it in a book and has no idea what it's supposed to sound like. "We always welcome visitors in Wallachia. Whatever your intentions, you may rest assured that Vlad will find some use for you. The skins of Turks make wonderful leather for saddle bags."

She laughs again, and Katte clings onto Zoroaster's head like a drowning man to driftwood, claws digging tighter in to the skin of his shoulder. He wants to reach up and pet her, but he doesn't dare show weakness to the Impaler. Nico doesn't have such pretences to pride, he dismounts and crouches down on the path to soothe Lonty's frightened whines.

He only does so following Leo's lead, of course. Leo is somehow more together now, in front of this madman and his freak of nature, than he had been just a few minutes ago when he suddenly decided he had no idea where he was or how he'd gotten there. And thank God he has pulled himself together, because Zoroaster would like to think that when Leo eventually does get him and Katte killed it will be a bit less pathetic than death after wandering blithely into the home of the most bloodthirsty tyrant in Christendom would be.

With a bow, Leo introduces them as emissaries from Lorenzo—Zoroaster wonders what the Magnifico would think of his war engineer dropping his name so casually for these fucking stupid little quests—and Dracula eventually invites them inside for dinner.

"As long as the dinner's not us," Zoroaster mutters.

Leo gives him a look of irritation, which is rich coming from that prick. "Oh, come on, you don't believe the stories, do you?"

Wait. There actually _are_ stories that this maniac eats people!?

"Fucking Christ," Katte moans in his ear. Silestrana hears her.

"The Turk and Ilara said we had to come here," she says airily, as though Zoroaster and Nico are just as bound by the whims of the Turk—and no matter what Leo says, Zoroaster is still wary as fuck about trusting a man with a scorpion daemon—as Leo seems to think he is. "Besides," she continues. "What's the worst that could happen?"

"The worst?" Katte snaps. "Well, a fucking cannibal could skin our humans and boil them in a stew then use the dust that used to be you, me and Lonty for seasoning, Silestrana; does it get any worse than that!?"

That beautiful smart-ass red bird replies, cheerfully, "That depends on whether or not they're alive when he starts to skin them."

"I fucking hate you!" Katte spits at her. Silestrana only laughs.

Even she's not laughing when they enter the dining chamber and see that monstrosity of a chandelier. Silestrana is generally more carefree than Leo proper, but she has her breaking point. They make a good show of diplomacy though, even as the Impaler proposes a toast to Satan.

Zoroaster's never considered himself a particularly religious man. He's fucked a few nuns in his time, sure, that's probably as close as he's got, but hearing someone sing the praises of the fucking Devil is just so wrong it almost makes it seem right that the monster has such a monster for a daemon.

And it only gets worse.

"And to Xarella," Dracula continues. "My conduit to Lucifer. Do you know—when I gave my old Xarella to the Bringer of Light, I had worried it might be difficult to live without her. But it isn't. I don't even miss her all that much; the familiar I was given in return keeps me excellent company."

He gestures at Xarella and it takes a minute for Zoroaster to realise what he's saying. That he sold his daemon to Satan in exchange for his escape from the Turks and for a familiar, like this is some fucking ghost story where things like familiars actually exist. Zoroaster's eyes find Xarella immediately, as though she'd suddenly attack Katte like in the stories—or Lonty; she's closer to Lonty and shit, how did Zoroaster let that happen?!

Xarella vaguely resembles a dragon. She's smaller than those of legend, of course, about the length of a man and half again including her tail, and only about knee-height, but that's still the largest reptile daemon that Zoroaster's ever seen, and that's only the reptilian part.

Her forearms are furred with massive claws, there's a lion's mane around her neck and feathers on her back legs. A third pair of legs is growing out of her sides, but they're bird talons and they don't move properly. She has wings too; a moth's, only giant, though he doubts they'd let her fly. They're black and white like the rest of her and Zoroaster almost thinks he can see the empty eye-sockets of a skull staring out from them like those of the corpses hanging from the stakes around the castle. Xarella herself has only those empty sockets, staring out at the rest of them.

How could something like her be a real daemon and not a devil's familiar? How could something like a familiar actually exist, and Xarella not be Dracula's daemon? He honestly doesn't know what would be worse.

"She is his daemon," Katte whispers to him. "The nutter only thinks that Lucifer took her away. I suppose she thinks she's not the real Xarella."

That's disgusting. Zoroaster sits in his chair and shifts around, trying for a comfort he knows he'll never find in this room. Leo is acting like he takes the whole thing in stride, but knowing him as he does, Zoroaster can tell it's an act. Leo's scared shitless. Zoroaster doesn't know if he thinks it serves the wanker right, or if it only makes him more afraid in turn. Much as he hates to admit it; he's relying on Leo for this one.

"Didn't it hurt," Leo asks the madman, "when your daemon was taken away?"

"It was an agony that knows no name," their host says, smiling genially.

As if it couldn't get any worse, new fear takes hold in Zoroaster's heart. Had this man actually been severed from his daemon?

No, that was impossible; no one would have someone who'd been severed as a head of state, and no Turk would have performed the procedure on someone so important—they'd never be able to keep it a secret and everyone in the Abrahamic world would call for their heads, regardless of how monstrous the victim was.

Dracula and Xarella are still attached. They just...

They're just disgusting.

They're disgusting when they have the man torn apart by dogs in front of Zoroaster and his friends, they're disgusting when Xarella laps up the dust of the victim's daemon and Dracula pats her on the head, they're disgusting when they find the Abyssinian held up in a cage by giant blades; his large heron-like bird that should be pink—Zoroaster's seen birds like that one before, she should be pink—brown with dirt and dried blood, wings clipped and hung upside down in a corner where her human can't even turn his head to look at her.

They're most disgusting when they just. Won't. Die—no matter what Leo and Zoroaster seem to throw at them, and when the Abyssinian dies with his guts pouring out, his daemon evaporating before Zoroaster could even catch her name, and Leo's crying for the loss of life while Silestrana shrieks in frustration for losing such a valuable source of knowledge—Katte wants to punch the stupid bird, he can tell—Zoroaster can't help but collapse down onto a rock and try not to cry himself.

Nico sits down next to him.

"We'll go home soon," he says. He's trying to be comforting, but it isn't working.

"As if," Zoroaster breathes. The tears make one final attempt to push past his eyelids, and he swallows them down for good. "You heard what the man said. We'll be in fucking Rome before long, God help us."

"Maybe He won't; after we made that toast to Lucifer?" says Nico glumly, and Zoroaster rolls his eyes.

"I think we'll be forgiven."

And speaking of forgiveness, his eyes land on Leo's heaving shoulders, still kneeling by the makeshift grave they've had to honour the Abyssinian with. If anything has come of this; at least that poor bastard isn't suffering anymore.

"You hear that, Leo?" he calls over to him. "Nico and I are coming with you to Rome. We're now the stupidest fucking pair of whoreson dogs who ever walked the earth, but we're coming with you all the same. Come over here at sit by the fire, before that ridiculous brain of yours freezes up."

Katte flicks him with her tail. "I don't remember me and Lonty agreeing to go," she points out, as Silestrana flies over to the fire ahead of her human.

"I'm definitely going!" says Lontalye, lifting her head up from Nico's lap. There's a tuft of fur missing from the knot on her head where Xarella's claws tore part of it away during the struggle. "We can't let Maestro go on his own!"

"Besides, Riario might be there," says Nico.

Leo sits down on Zoroaster's other side, sighing. "I'm rather counting on it," he says.

Zoroaster groans.

"What do you think?" Katte asks loudly. "Is now the perfect time, or should we wait until we're safely back in Italy to leave this reckless prick to his date with certain death."

"Oh, you love him really," Zoroaster says, because Leo's feeling bad enough right now and there's no way he's leaving him.

"Him, maybe," Katte retorts. "It's her I have the real problem with; narcissistic attention-whore."

"Better that than a dirty lowlife tramp," caws Silestrana.

"Fuck you!"

"In your dreams!"

The familiarity of these arguments between Katte and Silestrana soothes the horror of what they've just witnessed somewhat, and it's enough for Zoroaster to crack a smile, put an arm around Leo and kiss the side of his head.

"You love her too," he accuses his daemon. "You love her and you want to have her freakish bird-monkey babies."

Leo snorts, and that makes up for the painful sting of Katte's paws twisting handfuls of his hair.

"Don't mention freaks right now, Zo," she tells him seriously. "If I never have to see anything like Xarella again it'll be too fucking soon."

Silestrana shudders, so at least that's got them on the same side. It's Lontalye who makes the next comment though.

"Do you think something like that could happen to any of us?" she asks. Everyone else goes still while she elaborates. "When Riario took us we were sure that nothing could ever be as horrible as that, but we didn't change at all. There must be lots of things way worse than that out there; her eyes were completely torn out!"

Zoroaster feels his blood run cold, and anger swells in his heart, raging even towards the idea of someone who'd do that to Lonty.

"That won't happen," Katte says fiercely. "We wouldn't let it. I'd scratch the eyes out of someone before they could do that to you."

"Not if I pecked them out first," says Silestrana. She surprises Zoroaster, because she's not usually so prone to stating her affections for others.

Lontalye is still scared though, and honestly Zoroaster can't blame her. He's scared too.

"We can't save everyone, though," she points out. "If I ever looked anything like she did... would we do terrible things like he did?"

"You can't think like—"

"I think I would." Nico interrupts Leo softly, and Zoroaster looks quickly over to him. He continues, "If someone did that to you, I think I'd feel so much hate I wouldn't be able to use it all on one person. I hate Riario more than words, and he never even looked at you."

Hearing that from Nico hurts. Lonty whines and lays her head on his lap again; Zoroaster can tell that Leo's looking in the same direction, speechless for once, and it would be a triumph if he didn't feel the exact same way.

All he can do is put his other arm around Nico and guide the boy's head against his chest.

"I'll never let that happen to you," he promises.

Leo shifts beside him so he can put an arm around Nico too, and Katte jumps off his back to hold onto Lonty. Silestrana joins them, and despite everything that's happened, it feels right.

"Nothing like that will ever happen to either of you."

 

 

Beside Lorenzo, on a satin-clad settee, Kalaiola's tail sways back and forth with an ease he hasn't seen from her in years, and he supposes it's an ease he hasn't felt in years.

His back still feels like it's on fire when he thinks about it, but when he doesn't he forgets, and forgets more than just the pain, he forgets the responsibility, the burden, the duty—he'd almost forget the count if he wasn't sure Kalaiola would have his head for it, or Clarice if he ever sees her again.

It makes him smile to see his daemon this way. That, and to see Hippolyta smiling up at him from where she's curled into his side. It's more painful to ruin this then Alfonso's lash ever was. Almost more painful than it was when that petulant sadistic brat grabbed Kalaiola by the scruff of the neck and kicked her.

But...

"We can't stay like this forever," he reminds her.

Hippolyta sighs, eyes lowering even though her smile stays, and Ledo doesn't look any happier, but Kalaiola is the one who growls,

"We haven't seen them in years, and you're that eager to be done with them? Do you prefer it when we're miserable, or are you just jumping at the bit for another tour of Ferrante's museum!?"

"Don't give me that," he orders her, then turns to Hippolyta. "I don't want the two of you to get into any trouble with Alfonso. The man is a violent thug who shouldn't be allowed off his father's leash."

She presses a kiss to his shoulder. "I can handle Alfonso," she assures him. "I just want you to be happy."

"I'll be happy when Florence is safe," he says, only half because it's what he has to say.

"We're happy now," Kalaiola hisses.

Lorenzo can't help but frown, and he wonders out loud: "Since when do you not care about Florence? With you it's always Florence this and Florence that. You never let me do anything when I'm actually there."

"Don't pretend to be dense," his daemon snaps at him. "You know why I remind you day after day of what Florence needs and how to go about serving those needs. We sacrificed _them_ for Florence. We had to believe the sacrifice was worth it. It wasn't."

"Yes it was," Lorenzo tells her, and he wishes he could say he used a tone that brokered no argument.

Argue she does. "It was not. We tried to fill the hole she left with an entire city, and even that, with the ones you call your family besides, was not enough."

"It is enough. I wouldn't want to be the kind of man for whom it wasn't."

"You are that man whether you like it or not."

"I am whatever I choose to be, and no one can tell me otherwise, not even you!"

He's pleased Kalaiola has no answer to that. Sometimes he swears he could strangle her.

But she's still angry. And Hippolyta looks between the two of them and sighs, and stretches out her hand; and surely she's not going to—

"It's all right, Kalaiola," she says. "Come here."

"Hippolyta," Lorenzo begins, but can't think of what to say next.

It's a bad idea, because they're not children anymore, and they can't have this, and yet his back is burning and he's tired to the core. This is everything Kalaiola wants right now, and if he doesn't satisfy her at least a little she's liable to make things difficult during the negotiations with Ferrante.

Kalaiola is stunned for a moment; being offered exactly what it was she wanted for once is something she almost can't quite believe. Hesitation isn't in her nature though, and she climbs down from the settee and hops up onto the bed.

"Hippolyta," Lorenzo says again. He can't bring himself to say anything else; he wants it too much himself, Florence be damned.

With soft and gentle hands Hippolyta brushes Kalaiola's cheek and strokes down her neck, past her shoulder and onto her side as far as she can reach. The feeling is instantaneous—a little discomfort, because they've been apart for so long and aren't quite the same people they used to be, but Kalaiola is still herself and Ledo is still himself, and so the discomfort is mostly overshadowed.

Very few things describe this sensation. In some places the law still demands beheading for touching a daemon who is not your husband or wife's, even if all parties consented to the act; it's that much more intense than simple sex.

He can feel Hippolyta in every fibre of his being. It's like she's overlaid herself onto him and slipped into his skin, like he can see her thoughts inside her head even if he can't quite read them. He feels her feelings too; her love, her sadness, her frustration—the peace she's feeling now as Kalaiola's rough fur slips beneath her fingers.

He feels her shock when she touches the place Alfonzo kicked, as Kalaiola settles her weight on top of him.

"Oh, my love," she whispers. "I am so sorry."

"We're fine," Kalaiola assures her. She's not telling the entire truth, because that kick hurts Lorenzo in his nightmares, and makes him feel Giuliano's absence all the more. Kalaiola just feels more anger because of it, anger that Hippolyta's touch is soothing.

Then Hippolyta reaches for Lorenzo's hand and puts it on Ledo's back, his smooth, warm scales like armour against Lorenzo's skin. Now the feeling changes, so all four of them are dancing in each other's hearts.

Ledo is usually a quiet and reserved daemon. He has an odd form; at first he appears to be a reptile, but isn't. He is a beast of some sort, like Kalaiola only with scales instead of fur, and two long front claws which he's assured them are for digging, not for fighting. A traveller from the orient visiting the court of Milan informed them once that he had seen such creatures in the wild, and they were called 'pangolin'.

This pangolin never speaks or acts without careful consideration. Lorenzo has seen him watch a situation unfold without ever saying a word, while Hippolyta charms and small talks her way through, only so she can ask his opinion at the end and receive a well-crafted plan of action that can leave Lorenzo speechless. Ledo loves plotting, and there's something about that that's attractive to Lorenzo, perhaps that he has the ability to consider things so carefully and plot a course that doesn't rely on violence and shedding blood—something he and Kalaiola tend to struggle with.

Now, however, he feels Ledo's guilt more than his cleverness. He can almost see Kalaiola's despair reflected back through Ledo's eyes, what he saw in her the day Hippolyta came to him in the cell and told him what Ferrante was going to do. He feels how Ledo searched for hours for another way out, but couldn't think of anything better than for Lorenzo to kill Ferrante and hope Hippolyta could save Florence herself as Queen.

Lorenzo sighs and grips Ledo's shoulders tighter.

"It's all right," he tells him. "There isn't even anything to forgive. I don't think we could have done it without you."

Kalaiola shuffles forward so her paw drapes over Hippolyta and rests on Ledo's back. Now all four of them are touching it's like their bodies don't even exist anymore.

It's better than heaven for a minute or two. And then Hippolyta asks—

"Do you do this with Clarice?"

She was afraid to, and Lorenzo feels instant regret from Ledo that she gave voice to that, but it's something that has to be addressed.

"No," he admits, closing his eyes and leaning back. "No, Clarice is..."

He feels his thoughts returning to their last argument and pulls away from Ledo abruptly. Because he doesn't want them to see that. Kalaiola wouldn't mind, he thinks, but he does, because however much he loves Hippolyta and Ledo, it would still be shameful for him to violate Clarice's privacy like that.

_You may resent her for not being every other woman in the world..._

That makes them sound terrible, doesn't it? He can't let himself hate Clarice. No, he loves her, and even though they parted on less than ideal terms he will go back to her. He knows it will make Kalaiola angry, but Kalaiola is almost always angry and that's the way it must be. As his vision of Giuliano had told him, her anger made him better.

Deep down, he knows she has some affection for Hilensius, even if she'd never show it. She rarely touches him, accepting his nudges sometimes when the girls made them proud, when their humans achieved some sort of victory, and that one incident just before they left when Clarice had struck him and Kalaiola had lunged at his wife's daemon and torn part of his mane out before he'd pulled her off him.

They'd sat holding their daemons on opposite sides of the room after that, like Becchi used to make him and Giuliano do when they'd had a falling out as boys. It had been embarrassingly childish for both of them, and perhaps that's the problem; that he loves Clarice far more like he loved Giuliano than like he loves Hippolyta.

This only makes him think of Giuliano, and of Becchi, and Lucrezia who that argument had centred around. All his great failures lined up in a neat little row and taunting him. He can't let Clarice be added to that list. The loss of Giuliano is still too raw for that, and if nothing else he knows Kalaiola feels that too.

Finally getting through to her with that thought, she pulls away reluctantly from Hippolyta, and pain flies back into his body, worse than before. That was another reason not to spend so much time touching another person's daemon; Hippolyta was probably the one feeling that pain those last few minutes, and that was unfair.

"You don't have to go back to her," Hippolyta tries, even though Ledo puts his claw on her hand and shakes his head. He's had years to think of a solution to their being married to different people and he hasn't found an acceptable one yet.

"To Clarice, or to Florence?" Lorenzo asks, pulling his trousers back on.

Hippolyta laughs sadly. "I should have known," she says. "Even if I could get you away from one, I'd never get you away from the other."

Lorenzo smiles, leans over to cup her face, and kisses her. "I love you," he tells her.

"We love you too," she says.

Then she takes a deep breath, and the moment's over.

"Now, Ledo and I have some ideas we think you may be interested in hearing..."

Ledo scampers forward and curls himself around Kalaiola, who licks his head. It always makes Lorenzo chuckle because that visitor to Milan had warned Hippolyta away from him years ago.

" _Leopards devour pangolins in the wild_ ," he'd said. " _Mind that boy doesn't eat you_."

And Hippolyta had grinned and answered, " _He already has_."

As she had him.

 

 

Nothing like what happened to Dracula and Xarella ever happens to Nico and Lontalye.

But something else does.

The storm rages outside and the sea floods into their cage. Lontalye whines and he lets her hop into his arms for comfort, however little use it will be when they drown at the bottom of an ocean. He thinks of Zoroaster and Lucrezia in the same place, and of his Maestro, who will never see any of them again.

He'll never get the chance to use all of Riario's little lessons against him now. And he knows in his heart that Riario will survive this, it's what he's good at, and he and his silent, secretive Velayli will return to plague Leonardo in the future.

"We can't let that happen, Nico," Lonty cries to him. "We can't die here! Maestro will need us to help him defeat Riario, that's what we said we were going to do!"

She's right. If only there were some way...

What would Leonardo do?

No, his plans have always been too brilliant for Nico to comprehend.

What would _Riario_ do?

He shouts and bangs on the bars of the cage, because there's nothing he can do without someone else to get him out, and apparently what Riario would do is to return, key in hand. Velayli is nowhere to be seen, but that doesn't surprise Nico because they have an unusually loose bond and he's probably gotten her to safety first; he doubts she'd do well down here in all this water.

"The Turk's prophecy... I fear he was right after all," Riario admits, and Nico accepts the little sprig of vindication that gives him happily, but it does nothing to diminish his surprise that Riario has come for him. He still doesn't understand what the man hopes to gain from his company.

Maybe he had planned to use him against Leo later, but then why choose to spare Nico and not Lucrezia? Why tell him the things he's been telling him. He can't really _like_ him, no matter what he might have said. You don't do things like this to people you like.

Whatever the reason, he throws the cage door open just as the ship tips and Nico finds himself falling back painfully against his straw cot. Riario grabs the side of the cage door for balance, then holds his hand out to Nico, and Nico's looking up at him from pool of frozen water with about zero in the way of options, so he takes what's offered.

There's another lurch when Riario drags him out of the cabin door. Lonty yelps as she's jostled against the wooden wall.

"Keep hold of her, Nico!" Riario yells, forging his way forward.

Nico's trying, but Lonty is feeling heavier than usual, and she's been feeling heavier for weeks. He'd like to blame it on his being weakened by captivity, but Riario hasn't been mistreating him in that regard at least and he's worried it might mean something far more upsetting.

Still, they make it onto the deck unharmed. That's as far as their luck takes them though, because a moment later they're thrown forward and the ship smashes into a rock and swerves. A wave collides with them, shooting up into the air when the side of the ship stops it and crashing onto the deck. One moment Nico is struggling to get back onto his feet, the next his feet are swept out from under him and there's a shooting pain in his arm when he catches it on something and that and the wave pull him in opposite directions.

What he's caught on, or rather what's caught him, is Riario, who right now is the only thing keeping him from dropping into the ocean where he would surely drown. In his panic, he forgets everything he knows about the man and holds on tighter to him.

It takes a moment for him to realise that that massive wave has run its course, and yet he still feels like he's being ripped apart. Then he realises his arms are empty.

"Lontalye!" he screams, turning over the side of the ship. "Lontalye!"

"Nico!"

She's in the water, not far from the boat, her dainty paws scrabbling at the surface as she kicks her legs to stay afloat.

"Lonty!" he shouts after her, and he almost jumps in but Riario is still holding him back.

"No, Nico—you can't swim!" Lonty cries, but that can't stop him, because he'd rather drown than die by separation, and the pain in his chest is already sending tears down his cheeks.

Riario forces him to take hold of the rope ladder, yelling, "Stay as close to the ship as you can!" at Lonty. Nico's in too much pain to snarl at him for talking to his daemon, and right now he doesn't even want to, because if someone can help him not be separated from her then even if that someone is Riario he'll do whatever it takes.

His captor manages to guide him down towards the lifeboat as he sobs and begs for Lonty like a baby. She's still struggling, crossing one wave just for another to push her back again, barely able to make her barking heard over such a dreadful rain. The pull between them is agony. When Zita reaches out to help him into the boat at last she wraps him in her arms, and for a moment he feels better.

Then another wave pushes the Basilisk against their boat, Riario loses his balance and the ship turns, shoving the boat to one side, and Lonty to another.

If Nico had thought the separation was painful before then he must have been just as naive as Zoroaster had always said he was before Riario drowned him. This is worse than pain. This is suddenly not being a person anymore.

He screams and screams and knows Lonty must be screaming back but he can't see her, or feel her—where is she? God, he's going to die from separation trauma, and that's the worst way to die there is; he'd heard people say that those who suffered from it were doomed to walk the earth as spirits, looking for their daemons until Judgement Day.

Leo would have scoffed at it, he knows, but Leo isn't here now, neither are Zoroaster or Vanessa, and for the first time in his life neither is Lonty. He wants his daemon. He can't think past anything but the emptiness. He wants his Lonty.

He's breaking.

...

" _Hold on_."

...

He doesn't understand who's speaking or what they're saying, but suddenly he's not alone in that dark place where he was shattering like a crushed shell; suddenly there's someone there with him.

" _Nico._ "

Nico opens his eyes.

It's a cat.

Rain continues to fall into his eyes, it's cold, and the boat would be hard beneath him but he's lying against Zita, and in his arms, in his hands, is a black cat.

Velayli is slightly unusual looking; not the average mouser you'd see prowling the streets of Florence at night. She's a little bigger for one thing; her fur is longer, and her face is shaped differently. It's pointier, her yellow-green eyes are smaller, or maybe she just has a heavier brow, and her ears are longer with little tufts on the end.

And he's touching her.

He's touching Riario's daemon.

His hands were already trembling when he realises this, and they get worse when he tries to pull them away. However, Velayli doesn't let him pull away. She catches his sleeve with her claws and pulls him back.

"No, my lord, you mustn't, it's too dangerous!"

Zita's voice reaches him as though from under water; where Lonty is. Out of the corner of his eye he sees Riario turn back to her.

"I'll know where Lontalye is as long as he keeps holding onto Velayli," he tells her. "Do you understand, Nico? Hold on."

"Girolamo!"

Riario dives into the water next to him. Nico is still holding Velayli, and though her touch is obviously keeping him from feeling the full excruciating horror of being separated from Lonty, Nico is still whimpering with pain, and a new horror is making itself known.

Lifetimes ago, before this doomed venture began, before Leo had ever gotten involved with the Medici or with Rome, Nico had been following him through the workshop one day, making notes of everything he and Silestrana were deciding they'd need for their next endeavour, Lonty only a few months settled and following him happily, when they'd heard a yell.

" _No, no, no_!"

Verocchio had been running his fingers over his scalp next to the canvas of one of the apprentices; Nico can't even remember his name now. Every head in the room had turned, and most had swiftly gone back to their own work. The Maestro, of course, flocked to conflict like pigeons to breadcrumbs, and had given Nico a wink before sliding over.

The apprentice had stood in front of his charcoal drawing, which to Nico had seemed fine in every measure; proportionally, anatomically correct, well-shaded—he'd been able to see movement in the figures but none of that had been Verocchio's complaint, nor made poor Dialanya stand there shaking her head back and forth.

" _Samson and Delilah_ ," Leo had announced. Nico had felt silly for not realising that as well.

In the picture a naked woman with a viper curled around her leg had a huge lion prone in her grasp, a pair of shears in one hand snipping the mane away. Nico had supposed artistic licence could account for Samson's daemon being male in the sketch. Samson himself had been a couple of feet away, reaching out feebly towards the others.

At the time, Nico hadn't understood why Leo had wrinkled his nose dismissively, while Silestrana only gave it her own low whistle of disapproval.

" _What is that_?" Verocchio had cried. " _The body language is fair enough, but the face? What do you call that expression—dull surprise?! She's_ touching his daemon _, boy! He should look like the world is coming to an end!_ "

The student had hung his head, his beaver daemon shuffling back in shame at the call out.

" _I... I don't know how I'd go about capturing that expression, Maestro,_ " he'd said.

Dialanya had sighed. " _That's probably for the best,_ " she'd remarked, as always calmer than her eccentric human.

Andrea had waved his hand at her. " _Yes, yes, probably. But if you're going to touch on the subject you've got to put some thought into it. It's more than pain, it's a violation of the sickest, most inhuman kind. It's being left with a stain that never goes away—a rape that breaks into your very core._ "

A rape that breaks into your very core.

A rape that breaks into your very core.

Nico's hands are holding Velayli tight, and Verocchio's words play over and over again in his mind.

God, what is he doing!?

"Keep holding on, Nico. Girolamo will find her. We've learned well how to stay afloat."

A voice he's never heard before is talking to him; Velayli's, and that's the other thing. Lonty is missing and everything Nico is with her. He's touching someone else's daemon, and daemon interference is the worst sin imaginable according to Abbelard, Albertus Magnus, and Thomas Aquinas, but while pain and self-recrimination are circling his mind like vultures, he's also feeling something completely alien to him. He's feeling Riario.

There's a single-minded ruthlessness it takes him a while to identify, because he's never felt anything like that before, but it whispers as if to say he _would_ find Lonty, because that's what he's decided to do, and once Riario has decided to do something; he does it. The ruthlessness surrounds him and burns the air like fire but moves like water; either way a force of nature.

But there's more. There's guilt; immediate guilt, and a tether that attaches it to a black hole of guilt that swirls with fear and anger and threatens to drag you in—would do so, if not for that fiery stubbornness that's driving him. This guilt reaches so deep that Nico can almost see the words associated with it; Riario's very thoughts, or what they boil down to.

_I deserve this. I deserve this. I deserve this._

Within the dark whirlpool is a paradox, a light that shines from the other side of his mind, a certainty in his own self-righteousness. He does terrible things, but they are the right things. They have to be. This suffering is necessary, because this suffering is only temporary.

And finally, there is something reaching back to Nico that's almost like it's trying to comfort him. There's sincerity there. Sincerity in affection, and another dark thorn that Nico knows is loneliness, for he knows loneliness better than anyone now.

_We could keep them_ , he thinks he sees. Not the words themselves, but enough of the concept that he can supply the words himself. _Even if they do not love us back, we could be there for them. A part of us could be theirs, and love them._

There's a strange image that accompanies this feeling. A... what is it? He can barely make it out... a rabbit? Somehow, the image is extremely important to them.

In his hands Velayli gives a little cry of distress, which reminds him that he cannot do this. He cannot seek to read Riario's soul like this; it's a violation that cannot be tolerated, even if it is Riario, even if he consented to having Nico touch Velayli, because he only did that so he could rescue Lonty. It would be wrong for Nico to take advantage of the one good act he's ever seen Riario commit.

Or would it be wrong not to take the opportunity to learn what he can so he can use it to help Leo later?

Nico gasps. Where had that thought come from!? That hadn't been him; that had been more like... more like Riario! God, he has to get Lonty back soon, using Velayli as a replacement might be the only thing keeping him alive, but it's wrong, and it's going to change him, it's changing him now, it has to stop—

He feels Riario's arms wrap around Lonty. He's wearing gloves, but his jaw brushes against Lonty's ear—by accident, Nico can feel that, but it doesn't lessen the awful feeling much, even as he rejoices inwardly at having his connection to Lontalye restored, if only by proxy and if only for a moment.

It had been for a second like someone had shoved their hand inside his chest and squeezed his heart. This is what Riario is feeling now, he tells himself. This is what he's been feeling every second since he put Nico's hands on Velayli, and as he realises it he sees it too; the discomfort in Riario's soul.

_I deserve this. I deserve this. I deserve this._

It's nothing like Nico would have thought it would be, if he'd ever been depraved enough to wonder what touching Riario's daemon would be like. It's so much sadder, and suddenly he'll never be able to see the man the same way again.

Riario pulls a panting Lonty to their rowboat without any further mishaps, and Nico pries his hands from Velayli as soon as he can feel his own daemon closing in. The pain is still exceptional, but he can bear it when the alternative is so obscene.

Lonty is shaking with pain. She'd never been far enough apart from him to lose contact completely, that would have killed her, but she'd been truly alone out there and it had crushed her. She struggles against Riario's hold when they get closer, trying to get away from him and to Nico, and Nico leans over the side of the boat sobbing while Zita steadies him.

Finally they touch, and the pain melts away. He takes her from Riario's arms, and everything is forgotten but themselves, everything but a snatch of Zita's voice he hears over the storm.

"And you said there was no goodness in you, my lord."

Riario answers, "I fear this only adds to my list of sins."

And Nico and Lontalye sleep.

When he wakes they've come ashore, and something is terribly wrong. Well, many things are terribly wrong, but more than anything there's something telling him to keep his eyes shut for just a moment longer.

"Please don't be scared, Nico."

Lonty's voice sounds the same as ever, if exhausted and subdued by trauma, but he knows there's something not right about it, and his knees curl up towards his chest.

"Nico..."

She's afraid, and her paw rests on his shoulder, nudging him. He knows what's wrong then and there; the paw is much too heavy. He forces himself to open his eyes.

His daemon is a white dog, as she's always been, but she's not the same white dog she was. She's more than twice her former size, Velayli, and Zita's Akamanthos put together, probably with Kerrickatte, Silestrana and Sheymir thrown in for good measure. Her fur hangs from her body in thick, coarse cords, her head is wider in proportion to her shoulders than the slender face she'd had before and her topknot has parted and hangs over her eyes in little skeins.

His daemon has shifted. Shifted after she'd been settled for years.

"I'm sorry, Nico," she tells him. "I didn't mean to, I promise."

Tears prick at the corners of his eyes as he reaches for her. "It's all right," he says. He holds her close. "I still love you. I still love you."

"It's an improvement in my opinion."

Both Nico and Lonty start away from each other at this new and unfamiliar voice. No, not unfamiliar—he'd heard it for the first time last night, but in everything else that had happened he'd almost forgotten.

Velayli is even more soft-spoken than her human. She talks entirely in a whisper and for once is fixing her jade eyes on them instead of on anything but. Disturbingly, Nico can still feel her soft fur beneath his fingers even with Lonty's new coarse cords in his hands. He knows he can't let her get to him—get to them now. He has to start with an offensive.

"Why does a rabbit mean so much to you?" he asks her.

There's a flash of vulnerability in her eyes, which makes him feel guilty, and then her look turns to pride, which is even more discomforting, because how much of Riario did he take with him when he pulled away from her?

Like him, she returns with an offensive.

"You resemble a certain Hungarian breed," she tells them. "Looks vaguely like a sheep; but it's used for controlling them."

"Or for protecting them from wolves," says Zita, approaching them with fresh water. Akamanthos flutters down from her back and holds onto Lonty, licking her ear comfortingly. "Don't go too far from Girolamo, Velayli. It's not good for either of you."

Velayli slinks off wordlessly and Zita sits beside Nico, smiling.

"It's a spiritual awakening," she tells him.

"Or a spiritual destruction," he replies.

Not all post-settling shifts are like what happened to Dracula—the Pope's daemon herself had shifted from a snowy owl into a swan shortly after his inauguration, and that was seen as a miracle from God; although given what that Pope is like it's hardly an endorsement. Under the circumstances, he's willing to bet Lontalye's change has been induced more by trauma than by enlightenment.

But Zita shakes her head. "Is that not for you to decide?" she asks him.

Akamanthos flies back to his human's shoulder, keeping his soft dark eyes on Nico as she leaves. Nico sips at the water he's been given and wonders.

Weeks later, he sees the look in Zoroaster's eyes, the horror and the anger, and he knows his friend is thinking back to Xarella, in all her grotesque glory. He'd never seen Zoroaster so shaken as he had the day he'd seen him looking at that thing, and now he's looking at Lontalye, maybe with the same thoughts running through his head.

And he's almost too glad that Zo isn't dead to mind that look directed at Lonty. Almost. But he can't forget Katte's horror from that awful night and how she said that if she never had to see such a thing again, it would be too soon.

He doesn't get to put a voice to his fears though. Zo notices him looking, and his horror morphs into shame, his arm flies out and pulls Nico to his chest, and it's warm and safe and all is forgiven.

"I'm sorry," Zo says softly. "There's nothing wrong with Lonty, if I made you think that's why I was upset, I'm sorry, Nico. I just..." he trails off to take a deep breath. "I just... if that bastard... if he put his fucking hands on her, the thought..."

"He didn't," Nico says quickly, and pulls away enough to look into Zo's eyes so he knows he's telling him the truth. "I mean... not exactly." He sees fury flooding back into Zo's expression and scrambles to explain. "Not with his bare hands, and only to save her from being lost at sea. It was my fault, Zo, I was the one who had to—"

"None of this was your fault," Zo insists, but he hadn't known what Nico had been about to say, and Nico still feels the stab of guilt for what he did, however much it hadn't been his idea.

"Zo..." he starts, and has to look away when he admits it. "It was me. I touched Velayli."

Katte gasps from her perch on Lonty's back and Nico recounts everything; as hastily as he can so Zo won't think badly of him, and as he does he wonders why he's doing it, if this is something that he wants to share because Zo is his friend, or if he's trying to control Zo somehow; control him and how he sees Riario, the same way Riario would if it was him. The way Riario would want him to do.

_Better to be feared than loved._ Will Zo fear him now, someone capable of touching another person's—even an enemy's daemon; whatever the circumstances? Is that what he wants to come from this; his own best friend unable to trust him the way he used to, unable to look at him the same way ever again?

But Zo does nothing but continue to hold him close, and as he looks past Zo's shoulder and spots two green-yellow stars of light watching him in the darkness of their prison, a part of him wishes someone had done this for Riario as well.

Perhaps that part is Velayli contaminating him, as he'd feared. But something tells him that in actuality that's not something she or Riario would want for themselves.

He holds on to Zo harder and bites back tears.

 

 

"That won't help," Hilensius sighs, and his head sinks lower than it should when he exhales.

Clarice waits for her spittle to dissolve into the wine enough that it's unnoticeable before she puts it back down on the table.

"It will make me feel better," she tells her daemon.

Of course, it would have made her feel better still if her spit was poison and she could watch Federico's ugly face screw up in pain as he stumbled around retching and dying in a heap on the floor while his fat little daemon squealed and trotted about. Maybe if he fell out a window and landed on a spiked gate for an encore. It would have made her feel better if—

"Clarice?"

She hasn't heard her name spoken out loud in what seems like years. The mercenaries either call her 'Signora' ironically as it's the wittiest thing men like them can think of, or 'Lorenzo's whore' or likewise. Those still loyal to her call her Signora with respect, and her girls call her 'Mama' on the rare occasions Federico lets her see them, even her eldest who she thought had grown out of it.

She swears she'll put a dagger through Federico's remaining eye for forcing her to go to her daughters dressed as some biblical harlot. Only his threats to put them in similar clothing stop her from agreeing to perform fellatio on him just so she can bite his filthy member off. She is a lion, after all.

But hearing her name spoken out loud again, and in such a hesitant, soft tone makes her feel more like a lamb.

When she turns around, she sees someone she never thought she'd lay eyes on again.

"Carlo..." She can't help but laugh bitterly. "You took long enough."

There's one blissful second before she remembers what she looks like and what she's doing, and starts to see herself as she imagines Carlo sees her. The humiliation is unbearable, even as he tries to comfort her with his touch. She pulls away.

By the looks of it he's suffered too. His face is battered and there are red lines around his wrists and neck she recognises as coming from being placed in the stockade. His shirt fits him ill—either he's lost weight or it was all he could find, and Clarice is betting on the former.

Beside Carlo is his snowy white fox demon Chelicye, a little less snowy than usual with the dirt that's streaking her coat. She's an outgoing, playful daemon, and it lifts Clarice's spirits to hear her laugh, run over to Hilensius and nip at the collar Federico had tied around his neck.

"You won't be needing that anymore, Lenny," she says cheerfully. "It looks awful on you!"

Clarice suddenly can't help but smile at her, and a grin graces Carlo's bruised face as well. Soon she has the disgusting thing off Hilensius' neck, and strokes her hands over all the places where she'd felt that one-eyed gargoyle lay his awful hands. But they can't stand around like that all day.

"How did you escape?" she asks him.

"Da Vinci has returned to Florence," Carlo says simply. "He has a plan."

Of course. Of course it's taken da Vinci no more than a few hours to escape, rescue Carlo, and infiltrate the palace with his motley crew to undermine Federico. By tomorrow morning Florence will probably be back under Medici control, and that's not a joke. Her husband might have had terrible taste in mistresses, and in military allies, but he certainly knew how to pick the right man to design a Columbina.

"Quickly."

Carlo takes her by the hand, only to lock and bar the door back to the dining hall and run with her in the other direction. Hilensius follows with Chelicye bounding along happily beside them, and they just have time to hear Federico yell, 'what the fuck is that?!' before they've ducked down into the doorway to the cellar that leads to the crypt.

"We should be safe here until da Vinci gives us the all clear," he announces, leaning against the wall to catch his breath.

"And what exactly is it that da Vinci is planning to do?" she asks. She knows she's not going to like the answer, but she has to ask.

Chelicye snorts and giggles, but Carlo has the grace to look a little more bashful. "I believe he's going to inflate a pigs bladder and fill it with noxious gasses, then drop it on Federico's head, knock him and his men out, and kill him."

"Oh, that old trick?" Clarice mutters.

Hilensius growls. "If that is the case then we can't stand around here waiting, we have to help him," he declares. "They took Dragonetti and Aberlynn to the same place they're keeping the sword. Lorenzo gave that sword to da Vinci for a reason, and I won't leave Aberlynn or her human to the mercies of Federico's men."

Her daemon is right. Those non-existent mercies were no reward for the one officer who had remained loyal to her in all this, whatever his past transgressions. Nor will she allow such filthy hands to further dirty the blade of her husband's family—of Carlo's family. Of _her_ family.

Retracing their steps, they retrieve the sword and Carlo dispatches the guards. He and Dragonetti take care of any further resistance on their way back to the crypt, whereupon they part so Dragonetti and Aberlynn can return to the dining hall to take care of the leaders of Federico's army and secure da Vinci's friends.

It's just as they're getting back to the crypt that Clarice understands the real reason Hilensius wanted the sword. There's only one sword in Florence fit to dispatch such a distinguished member of the nobility, after all. Hilensius announces their entrance with a roar.

"Da Vinci! Stay you hand!" Clarice commands.

Da Vinci, the same as he's always been as far as she can see—if a little scruffier around the edges, obeys her. His daemon flies back to his shoulder from where she had been pecking at Federico's ugly creature, who wears a form ill-suited to fend the bird off, unable to turn her massive head far enough to dislodge her from her back. What had Federico called her—a miniature hippopotamus? Whatever she is she grunts in terror at Hilensius' approach, and deep down Federico really is a coward so Clarice supposes it makes sense.

Federico tries to save face; what he has left of one.

"Tell him, woman!" he dares to order her. "I'm the Duke of Urbino! There'll be a tribunal. My fate won't be decided by some Florentine bastard! I'll be judged by my fellow heads of state!"

"Federico..." whines his daemon, shuffling back from Hilensius, whose legs she had been so willing to bite at only a few minutes ago. Apparently she's smarter than her human, if no less brutal.

"Shut it, Jedra," the Duke snaps. "She can't let him do anything to us!"

He's right in one thing. Da Vinci isn't a suitable judge. He is a son of Florence, loyal and integral, but he hasn't been here for the worst of what's happened, so he can't truly appreciate the atrocity of what this pig has done.

"That you will," she assures him.

Without further ado, she brings down the blade.

"Guilty."

Hilensius roars in triumph as Jedra disappears into a pile of dust. Blood wells up around the blade and spills out of the dead bastard's eye sockets. It's not as satisfying as Clarice had dreamed it would be, but it was the right way to do it nonetheless.

She takes the blade with her when she leaves, and she has to leave, because she cannot fulfil her duties looking like this; she'd already struggled to be taken seriously before Federico had stuffed her into this doxy's getup.

"Clothes shouldn't make the woman," Hilensius tells her.

"Easy for you to say," she returns, "now that you're no longer wearing that collar."

The collar had been the worst thing about the invasion. She'd thrown up when Federico had rubbed his grubby hands on Hilensius' mane to get it on, and it makes her nauseous even now. But she refuses to let the image people have of her be warped by Federico's base perversions any longer. She is the wife of Lorenzo de Medici and head of the Medici Bank in his absence. She is the leader of her people, and this city.

"Clarice!"

There's no need for her to turn around to know Carlo has followed her out of the crypt. Now the crisis has passed she feels slightly anxious in regards to him. Did he think Federico had forced himself on her? Would he believe her if she said he hadn't? Should she confide in him about what he'd done to Hilensius?

Were those things 'lovers' did?

"Clarice, wait!"

She will not wait, and yet she cannot bring herself to send Carlo away either right now. She continues on to her chambers with purpose.

"The girls, Clarice," Hilensius reminds her.

Of course. She hadn't forgotten them. But she will not let them see her like this again.

"Carlo," she stops momentarily to address him. "See to it that my daughters are secure."

At once she turns to leave again, even though Carlo's arm flies out to stop her, but he isn't willing to touch her right now—probably guessing correctly that she will not allow it. However, Chelicye hops past her and stands in her path.

"Wait, Clarice!" she cries.

Since, on this occasion, it is Carlo's very soul that is talking to her, Clarice waits.

"I've already told da Vinci to pass that on to Dragonetti when he's finished," Carlo explains.

"Very well," she tells him, and begins to walk towards her rooms again. Chelicye doesn't stop her, but she does run alongside her rather than turn back herself, Carlo following the both of them.

Clarice has no compunctions about allowing Carlo to be in the room while she changes; indeed, she'll need someone there to do up the laces in the back of even the more simple of her gowns, and it's nothing he hasn't seen before besides.

She rips the ridiculous garments off her body, refusing help from Carlo as she does. Hilensius retrieves something simple from her wardrobe. Several of the dresses are missing; used by Federico's men to dress up the girls they favoured. She will buy new ones without much care.

Carlo waits until he has the time to help her dress to speak.

"Are you all right?" he asks her.

Hilensius answers for her, exactly what she was thinking. "What a stupid question."

"I suppose it is," Chelicye chirps cheekily. "Try again, Carlo—you can do better!"

"Are you uninjured?" Carlo rephrases, smiling.

"Everywhere except my pride," Clarice admits through gritted teeth. "Lorenzo trusted me to look after this city. I can't help but feel like had he been here—"

"Had he been here they would have killed him and put his head on a pole outside the city gates. His not being here is the only thing that saved his life, and ours."

Clarice sighs. "All the same. You know, people once thought we'd be a perfect match. A lion and a leopard. But I hear Hippolyta Sfvorza has some strange scaled beast for a daemon, and as for my perfect match..."

She looks towards Chelicye, but she cannot bring herself to say it out loud, because she does not know if she and Carlo could ever be termed 'perfect'. She doesn't know how much she truly loves him, and how much her being drawn to him depends on other factors. She doesn't know how he sees her either.

"Either way, Lorenzo is a fool," says Carlo.

It's strange. Hilensius snorts in agreement, but Clarice herself feels offended.

"Lorenzo is..." she begins, but doesn't know what to say.

"Not here," Chelicye finishes. "Though I suppose he really will come back now the coast is clear."

Clarice shakes her head. "He would have returned either way, if he'd been able," she says. Then, with a laugh, "Da Vinci himself said so, after all."

"Well, I don't think I can argue with that." He ties the final tie, leans forward, and kisses her cheek. Chelicye nuzzling at Hilensius makes it doubly sensual, a feeling she's never had from Lorenzo.

Lions and leopards are too close together, perhaps.

"There now," Carlo continues. "You are yourself again."

"I am never not myself," Clarice retorts.

But Hilensius looks to her sharply, as if to remind her that as much as the ordeal she's just put an end to has been horrific, she'd felt more like herself throughout than she had in the months before with Carlo.

Perhaps that is what it means to be in love.

Da Vinci's friends are recovered from the effects of his schemes by the time she and Carlo have returned to them, and da Vinci himself gives her an approving smile and a bow when he sees her; his daemon bows too, which she considers especially approving. His respect makes Hilensius lift his head up high again.

"I hope you have some ingenious plan for cleaning this mess up," she tells him, nodding to walls now adorned with crudely drawn penises.

The _artista_ grins. "I'm sure Zoroaster and Amerigo will make short work of it with a bucket and sponge."

The stockier of his two companions rolls his eyes. "Funny," he comments.

"We could always regale her ladyship with our tales of the fearsome Nioferans," offers the dark-haired one, though he says 'Nioferans' as though it's a joke of some sort.

"And why shouldn't they be called Nioferans?" asks the seagull daemon perched on the stocky man's shoulder. "I flew over that shore at the same time as Silestrana, and Amerigo set foot on it at the same time as the rest of you."

"Sure," says da Vinci's friend's monkey daemon. "As long as the locals don't mind being named after something known for shitting on people's heads and stealing their food."

"Well from what I hear they deserve worse," the bird retorts.

"You won't find argument from me on that one," says the dark-haired man. "I suppose I'll admit; I'd rather have Niofera shit on me than get sacrificed to their heathen gods."

The stocky man glares. "That can be arranged."

"Oh, shut up, the four of you!" laughs da Vinci. Clarice is almost sorry to hear him put an end to their antics. They remind her of the plays Giuliano used to favour. "I'll be happy to tell Signora Orsini anything she wants to hear about once we've cleared Florence of the last of the Duke's men."

"That shouldn't take long," says Carlo, giving Chelicye a final pat on the head and pushing himself up from the table he'd been sitting on. "Dragonetti and I can take care of it—with a little help," he looks pointedly at da Vinci's friends, who cringe together.

Clarice feels the urge to go with them and put a sword through a few more eyes very strongly. The servants to the House of Medici had been supposed to be under their protection, and yet good men were killed and good women defiled at the hands of the mercenaries—sometimes the other way around, and sometimes both. Hilensius growls beside her in agreement; she feels his fangs itch to sink into a guilty throat.

However, her duties lie elsewhere and are just as important.

It would be highly improper to kiss Carlo goodbye in public, even in front of someone as loyal as da Vinci, so she does no more than nod to him and feel her heart swell at the smile he returns with, while Hilensius flicks his tail into Chelicye's face and makes her burst into giggles. The four men are all laughing as they leave the room. Chelicye hops up onto her hind legs and pecks the side of HIlensius' mouth before she dashes after Carlo.

The servants wait for Clarice's next instructions.

"Federico's men never found the fireworks that were meant for the next carnival," she reminds them. "I think it's time they were put to use!"

From the smiles on her battered people's faces, they agree with her. For one night, almost everything is perfect, though even in the comfort she takes from Carlo, she recognises the empty space Lorenzo has left at her side.

But for one night, she feels her heart sing, and Hilensius is calm.

Later, she can clearly hear her own voice, shouting her pain out at Lorenzo inside her head— _what were you thinking? The woman had a fucking cuckoo for a daemon_!—and thinks Chelicye must be laughing at her, and must have been laughing at her the entire time. She'd scolded her husband for letting a cuckoo into their nest, and the moment he was gone she'd invited a fox into their henhouse.

How could she have been so blind?!

"I suppose Lorenzo and I truly belong together after all," she tells a sleeping Vanessa. "I wish God had chosen a less cruel way to show us that."

"Kalaiola will kill us when she finds out," Hilensius predicts glumly. "And she will find out."

And she does.

But she doesn't kill them, and neither does Lorenzo.

Instead they sit in the wine cellar and drink until they no longer see any reason not to swap stories about the dangerous creatures they almost allowed to destroy Florence, and they laugh and cry and laugh some more. Kalaiola even rests her head beneath Hilensius' mane so they can confide in each other about the barbarians who dared to touch them against their wills during their time apart.

Lorenzo expresses his regret that he didn't get a chance to stick any swords in Federico by pretending the Duke is a bottle of wine, and throwing the bottle against the wall. Clarice promptly declares the next bottle Alfonso, who truly sickens her with his continued existence, and sends it to join the Duke.

She throws it so hard she overbalances and lands laughing hysterically in Lorenzo's arms so he can kiss the top of her head. And it's such an irony, she thinks.

They truly are a perfect match.

 

 

"I don't like the thought of you putting ideas into his head."

The Holy Father holds one of the shiny black stones between his fingers. He rolls it around as if he's trying to crush it into a powder.

"Oh?" the Prisoner replies. "What possible ideas would I be putting in your son's head by playing a simple board game with him?"

The croaking voice hasn't finished its final syllable before the Pope backhands the board in front of him and dozens of little stones go flying onto the floor. Zita gasps—thankfully in silence, so the Holy Father's attention is not drawn to her—and draws back from the sound. The Prisoner stays still. His daemon doesn't even move in her covered cage.

After a moment in which Zita can hear little more than the beating of her own heart, the Pope clicks his tongue and shakes his hand.

"Now you've made me hurt my hand," he says. There's joviality in his tone, the kind Girola—the kind her master has warned her to be exceedingly wary of.

But the Prisoner is not. "After all these years, Alessandro, can you really expect me to believe that anyone could make you do something you did not want to? Are you telling me your son does not possess the same quality?"

"Girolamo?" laughs the Pope. "Of course not. What would I want a child I could not control for? Fearsome as his reputation may be, you and I know the boy is weak beneath the surface. I have made sure of it."

"I see you have. But he has weaknesses you would rather he didn't have, as well as those you approve of."

The smirk disappears from the Pope's face. "I know how to curb those weaknesses. What of it?"

"We should leave, Alessandro," snaps the Pope's daemon, her long neck letting her peer around her human's robes. She really doesn't like the Prisoner. "He's boring me. We have other things to do."

"I apologise for not being more entertaining, Trelantro," says the Prisoner, and that's not the Pope's daemon's name, everyone knows that, but it's what the Prisoner calls her without fail.

She hisses at him for it. The Pope's expression twists as if he'd just bitten into a lemon.

"Girl!" he snaps.

Zita prays for deliverance and steps forwards, eyes down.

"Finish up here and get out. I shall not be requiring your services tonight."

A sigh of relief threatens to pass her lips, so Zita drops to the floor quickly to collect all the little pebbles without making a sound. The Pope turns on his heel and sweeps out of the room, his pure white swan following close behind.

Grabbing the cup off the little table, Zita returns the pieces of the game to their home. With the Pope gone Akamanthos flies down to her from the ceiling and lands on her shoulder. This time she does not try to hide her sigh of relief.

Akamanthos then crawls down her arm and noses at one of the black stones.

"Do you think we could put them back the way they were?" he asks her. "I wouldn't want Girolamo's game to be ruined."

"Shh," she tells him. "He'll understand."

There's no way she could remember the positions every piece had been in anyway. She'd spent most of the Holy Father's visit with her mind on her own safety, her eyes half on him and his daemon, half on Akamanthos, praying neither Sixtus nor Jetariel noticed how much trouble she was going to to keep his attention away from him.

If he ever did notice, her only hope would be that he considered her too far beneath his station to bother toying with in that way. She still doesn't know whether the 'interest' he has shown in her is the casual interest of someone with a new toy, or just a way for him to assert even more dominance over Girolamo.

She wonders what he thinks she is to Girolamo.

And she wonders what she really is to Girolamo.

"Don't worry, my dear."

The Prisoner's harsh voice cuts through the silence of the room like a curved blade. Zita freezes where she is.

"I remember quite well where all the pieces were. I assure you, I won't change them in my favour."

Somehow one of Zita's wits must have failed, perhaps because she hears the mother tongue she'd thought she'd forgotten the sound of again, because she answers him—

"My Lord was certain he would not win anyway."

"Oh?" the Prisoner laughs. "At least he knows his own weaknesses. I had thought he might be better at the game, but of course—he's learned strategy of a different nature."

Zita knows what he means. She knows all too well. But the Prisoner elaborates anyway, while she mentally kicks herself for engaging in a conversation that could get her killed.

"Most people who enter into the world of politics find it far more cruel than they had ever dreamed it was. They are thwart at every turn by the greed and lust of others, and despair that loyalty and integrity are more difficult to find than pearls. Your master is cursed with the opposite viewpoint. He has learned to see the world as Hell itself, and every person in it but his father damned. He expects nothing but evil from every quarter. Evils that most sinners only glimpse in their nightmares. One day, we hope to see him realise that _this_ is not Hell."

There's a double meaning to that that Zita also understands. She knows both ways it could be interpreted, but she cannot decide which way the Prisoner means it. This is troublesome, because now she can't decide whether the man is a friend or an enemy to Girolamo. The latter would be the obvious conclusion, Girolamo is one of this man's captors after all, but sometimes in their interactions she thinks she sees something far from hatred towards him from the man before her.

She should not have started speaking to him. She should continue to gather the last of the stones in silence. But Akamanthos presses his head to her cheek to urge her on; he's a little bolder than she is and he knows she's been curious about this prisoner.

"As do I," she tells him. "There are good things, in this world. We know this well."

Probably she shouldn't take pride in the clear surprise she's given the Prisoner, but she doesn't think it's showing on her face, so she allows herself this small pleasure.

"What goodness do you speak of, child?" he asks.

"The goodness that is in him," she tells him, confidently. She's wanted to tell someone for a long time.

The Prisoner snorts. "And how he was goodly enough to make a slave of you?"

Bristling, Zita puts the last of the stones in the cup and sets it on the table. "I am far better off his slave than I was the free wife of the man who sold me to pay his debts," she tells him. "I came from a wealthy family, Signore. I was learned in literature and mathematics. Since I was forced to leave that family, only Count Riario has shown any respect for my accomplishments."

Part of Zita continues to despair that the rest of her has decided it's a good idea to engage with the man before her, but Akamanthos is approving. He knows how long she has wanted to say this to someone, and she has few friends in Rome.

So she finishes by telling the old man, "I want to help him. I want to protect him."

"Even though he allows his father to make what use of you he will?"

Zita frowns. "That is no more his choice than it is mine. I understand that. I understand what it is to be at the mercy of a cruel man; a slave in all but name. I understand better than anyone."

The Pope may not hurt Girolamo the same way he likes to hurt her, but she has seen him do terrible things to him. There's a reason she tries to keep Akamanthos as far away from the man as possible

"I suppose you do. Forgive me, Zita." He takes a deep breath. "I fear my long imprisonment has impaired my manners. I also fear your master is under the protection of a hyena. I'm sure you understand what I mean by that too. I first heard the fable in your country."

She does know what he means. Unbidden, memories of a life she once had flash before her eyes. Of being small and feeling safe, however false the feeling had turned out to be. Of Akamanthos shifting into a wildebeest calf to match her mother's daemon as he tried to herd him towards the bed to sleep. Of her mother's mischievous smile, and low whisper.

_"Once, my child, three brothers were walking through the desert together—hungry, thirsty, tired to the bone. They searched in vain for shelter from the sun and the scorpions, and then even as they thought it could not get any worse, a huge, monstrous hyena appeared before them, licking his sharp fangs and growling."_

She remembered her younger self saying, _"Their daemons should become something big and strong—to fight the hyena!"_

_"Ah, but they were a little older than you, and their daemons had already settled into small beasts. And the hyena was very hungry, and he wanted to eat all of the brothers up! Munch, munch!"_

Her childish giggles still echo in her mind.

_"But, he also didn't want any harm to come to himself. So he asked the brothers, 'you three are wandering alone in my desert—to be so audacious must mean you have the protection of a great power. Tell me, boy—who is it that protects you in this desert?' And the first boy said: 'Great Hyena, I am under the protection of God, and all his holy powers'."_

_"Does God kill the hyena?"_ She'd asked.

_"Shh. The hyena said: 'if you are under God's protection, I cannot kill you; for God would be angry with me and he might destroy me in turn'. And so he turned to the second brother and he said: 'And whose protection are you under, boy?' And the frightened boy said, 'Great Hyena, I am under the protection of the Earth, from whom all life springs'."_

_"How can earth protect him?"_ She'd asked.

Her mother had put her finger to her lips. _"And the hyena said, 'if you are under the protection of the Earth, I cannot kill you, for the Earth would be angry and she might starve me'. So he turned to the third brother and said, 'whose protection are you under?' And the third brother fell to his knees, trembling, and laid his hands against the sands and said, 'Great Hyena, I am under_ your _protection'."_

Zita remembers anticipation keeping her silent at this point.

_"And the hyena said: 'My protection? That is good. Come inside my stomach where I can protect you fully'. And he swallowed the boy and his daemon in one bite."_

Zita knows what it means to choose the protection of a hyena. For all the wisdom of her mother, her father had ended up doing just that. And without the power of God and the Earth, hyenas are difficult to escape from.

In the present, awkward silence follows. Zita is disheartened. Then a new voice breaks that silence.

"There is a way you can help him."

Both she and the man in the cell look towards the covered cage that is barely visible in the prison's darkness. The voice of the bird—she knows it's a bird, she's heard it fluttering before—is raspy, but somehow sage.

"Jetta," says the Prisoner; a warning.

"There is a way," the daemon says again. "Girolamo's affliction stems from within his own heart. If you had that heart, you could stop the affliction." She pauses, and Zita hears her flutter again. "And you do want his heart, do you not?"

Akamanthos leans in eagerly, but Zita is more cautious. She herself has daydreamed of this solution, but had considered it no more than that; a daydream—a flight of fancy. To even try to take Girolamo away from his father would be dangerous. And it's not that she has much to lose, but what little she does have is so much more important to her now, not forgetting how much worse she might make things for Girolamo.

"We have been afraid to seek it properly," Akamanthos admits, crawling forward. He flies from her shoulder to the cage bars and hangs from them, as close to the dark object in the rear corner as he can get without going into the cell.

"God tells us not to be afraid," says the other daemon. "The sound your wings make... you're not a bird, are you?"

Stretching his wings to full capacity, wider than the breadth of Zita's shoulders, Akamanthos shakes his head. "A bat, Signora," he tells her.

"Halfway between bird and beast," the Prisoner remarks. "A daemon rarely seen."

"It suggests you have more than one kind of talent at your disposal," says his daemon. "You can use those strengths to help your master. Show him there is beauty in the world as well as darkness. He can come to rely on you to be his light. Yes, I think you could do it; and I think you should do it. What is going to happen... must happen. You can be the one Girolamo turns to when it does."

This pronouncement fills Zita's heart with worry and sends Akamanthos flying back to her. She's often wondered if this man and his daemon didn't have some kind of power to see things others can't. This might be a true warning of things to come.

"You think something grave awaits my Lord?" she asks them.

"If you are with him, the gravity may not be so bad. He needs someone like you, child, to help him find the Book of Leaves."

She can't think of what to say. Her fears and her desires clash deep within her heart, and her hand reaches up to stroke the fur on Akamanthos' head.

"You must go now, Zita," the Prisoner tells her. "The Holy Father has eyes and ears everywhere. I fear what might happen if news of this conversation were ever to reach him."

That particular fear is enough to make Zita bob her head, collect her tray, and walk out of the room at once.

But that fear is no longer the only thing on her mind. There is now a determination as well.

"That settles it," Akamanthos tells her, calmly. "We can't let anything happen to Girolamo, or Velayli. We have to fight with them from now on."

He's right, she thinks.

And yet, they do not hear what the Prisoner says once they've hurried out of the dark.

"That was cruel, Jetariel."

And they do not hear the owl in the cage reply.

"Cruelty is a staple of our family, Francesco."

And months later, when she guides Girolamo's hands to push the blade into her body; when Akamanthos crawls forward to wrap his wing around their lover's shoulder and she truly glimpses his fractured soul for the first time, she finally knows how the Prisoner truly intended to show his nephew that his world was not Hell.

A long white corridor stretches out in front of them.

_We forgive you!_

She cries, but she knows that even if he hears her, he will not believe her, and she has left him to two hyenas instead of one.

 

 

Whelinei settles the day Alfonso kills a horse with a single shot and saves his own and her life.

She'd been late in settling, very late, and some had giggled and whispered it meant Alfonso was backwards when they'd thought he hadn't been around to hear. Many a flogging had resulted from insolent tongues who'd underestimated how well his ears could seek them out.

One shot and the horse falls, and he and Whelinei are safe, or as safe as they've ever been. For a moment he's worried his father will order that the rope be pulled anyway, just to be contrary, and that his head will go flying off like a weed being plucked out of the ground. He's sure that Grisendora is honestly considering it from her perch on his father's shoulder.

But instead the King steps forward; arms wide.

"God," he declares, "has found favour with you, Alfonso!"

Alfonso pants and tries not to fall to the ground, however much his knees are shaking. Whelinei hasn't settled yet though, she shifts from a lynx, to a large lizard, to an eagle and lands on his shoulder. She's still too terrified to speak.

"I suppose," his father continues, "I should be proud." There's nothing ambiguous about his tone. He's not unhappy, but he's certainly not proud either. "Or perhaps this is God's way of telling me that he favours me in all things, even in my children? I trust you will agree with him in that?"

Of course. He risks his life to earn the chance to stand on equal footing with Ferrante, only to be told it proves he must agree with him in all things. Alfonso feels his heart sink, as Whelinei hunches over in anger and leans forward.

"That's not fair!" she hisses.

Damn it.

Why had she had to choose that moment, of any moment, to let her anger outdraw her fear and say something like that when Grisendora has obviously heard her?! The vulture cocks its head to one side and flies from Ferrante's shoulder, and towards them, landing on top of the gallows.

"Oh? Did you hear that, Ferrante?" she calls back. "Our child thinks we are being unjust."

His father's eyebrows raise. "Do they?" he asks, and does he have to use that awful false-surprised voice? "I'm afraid I didn't quite catch it. Bring Whelinei here so we can hear it from the horse's mouth."

Too afraid to think, Whelinei becomes a rat and tries to hide in Alfonso's shirt, but the noose is pressing his collar to his neck and she can only get halfway in before Grisendora's talons close around her and pull her away.

"No!" cries Alfonso.

Grisendora takes to the air at once. Alfonso's heart rate alters, but he can't tell if it's going faster or if it's seized up entirely, he just knows that it hurts; because Whelinei is being taken away from him. He almost tries to go after her with the noose still around his neck. By the time fingers that no longer feel like his pull the rope away, Grisendora has already brought Whelinei to his father, and tears are running down his cheeks.

He staggers forward, towards the viewer's box, loses balance and falls at one point—dust caking onto his dark trousers. But he stumbles back onto his feet and proceeds until he slams into the wooden wall beneath the King.

It's as close as he can get to Whelinei, who he hears squealing pitifully, but it's still not close enough.

_We're fools,_ he thinks, struggling to stay upright. _We should have become something too big for her to get her claws in. Something too big for anyone to get their claws in. Something no one would dare try to get their claws in._

"Can you not even stand to be this far away from your daemon without blubbering like a child, Alfonso?" Ferrante asks him. "Is this why she hasn't settled yet?"

Alfonso can't answer. He doesn't know what he's supposed to say.

"If their bond is troubling them, we could give them an impetus to become stronger," Grisendora offers.

The words are poison. Alfonso knows they mean something terrible. Fuck; why have things turned out like this?! He killed the fucking horse, didn't he?!

"You know, my dear, I think you might be right? Back to your partner, Whelinei—your mother and I have something to show you we think you'll quite enjoy."

They know they won't, but as Whelinei is brushed off the rail and shifted into a bird to fly back to Alfonso's arms, the relief is too great for them to care. They won't figure out a way to stop the King at any rate, so they may as well take this comfort where they can.

Ferrante has guards haul Alfonso up, guards Alfonso swears to kill later (and does), and together they drag him down into the mausoleum where all the men who'd failed where he's succeeded spend eternity. And Alfonso feels no sympathy when he passes them. He was able to make the shot, and so it was possible to make the shot, and so if you didn't make the shot it was your own fucking fault. They should have prayed harder to St. Edmund, as he'd been advised to do.

There's a door at the back of the room; a door Alfonso's never been through before. His contempt for his fellow archers fades into apprehension when he sees his father open five different locks that are on the door, with five different keys. What on earth needs that much fucking protection, in addition to everything surrounding their makeshift crypt?

Whelinei has become a cobra, her forked tongue flickering as she whispers in his ear.

"What could be behind that door that he wouldn't dare keep in his other rooms?" she asks him.

Alfonso doesn't answer. He doesn't want to know.

But he has no choice.

The door swings open. Whelinei coils tighter around him; she's more afraid than he is, more afraid by far, and that's worrying. If she senses something he doesn't, like as not it has to do with daemons, and when he sets that against what Grisendora had said about their tight bond being a problem, he really doesn't like where this is going.

But he still has no choice.

Inside the room is a gigantic contraption Alfonso has never seen the like of before.

There's a huge cage, with an iron cross on one side big enough to crucify a man on, and a finer mesh cocoon in the centre of the other, with a little door leading into it. There's a large set of gears all hooked up to one another behind the cage, a boiler that another pair of guards have already lit, and above the cage running from one end to another and suspended with dense chains is what seems to be a massive blade.

If that blade were ever dropped, he thinks, it could split a stack of men in half. It could split an iron chest in half, it looks so heavy, and though its edge is no longer smooth—for this is a very old item, he can tell—it's still sharp as hell.

"Grisendora," his father says.

He doesn't need to specify an order. Grisendora flaps her wings and grabs Whelinei by the head, pulling her off Alfonso's shoulders so fast it nearly chokes him. He cries out.

"No!" and fights against the guards, but they are suddenly all so much stronger than him, and he can't fight them. He needs to learn to be better; he's spent too much time on archery in preparation for this day—neglected his skills in close combat. He should have had a sword with him. No, two swords, so he can kill two of his father's guards at once.

And he won't stop there. One sword for Father, one for Grisendora; he'll skewer them both.

"Alfonso!" Whelinei shrieks, her body squirming in her mother's grasp. Alfonso keeps fighting, keeps yelling and hurling curses, but neither of their efforts are paying off.

The cocoon is opened by Ferrante, and Whelinei stuffed inside. When she tries to bite onto the mesh to keep from being pushed in, their father simply grabs her head and throws her in, the shock of which has Alfonso go momentarily limp as well. Ferrante had been wearing gloves; but still.

As the cocoon is wired shut, Alfonso finds himself strapped to the iron cross. He imagines his father enjoys the imagery of this.

"Do you know what this machine is, Alfonso?" Ferrante asks him.

Alfonso doesn't bother trying to think of an answer. Whelinei has shifted into something he can't see through the mesh and is beating against the walls of her prison and screaming. She sounds like a cat.

_Get bigger_ , he urges her in his mind. _Get stronger._

"No, I don't expect you would. It hasn't been seen or heard of since ancient times. The church went to great lengths to destroy every one of them; every image, every text, every slightest whisper that they ever existed. _Machina Intercisione_. No translation into modern Italian, of course."

_Machina Intercisione_. The words fill his heart with dread before he even understands them. Machina is 'machine', of course, and 'Intercisione' is a cut between something, but 'cutting machine' has no meaning to him until he looks at it in context of what his father has already said.

Fixing the bond between him and Whelinei, and a cutting machine.

He screams.

"Fire it up, boys!" cries Ferrante, joyfully, and he's mad—he's fucking mad! He can't do this! He can't!

"NO! No, father you can't! Please! For Christ's sake, father, you can't take her away from me; it's a sin! Please, father!"

The gears are turned. There's water boiling in a tank above them and little streams dripping down the blade; the blade that's meant to cut Whelinei from him. He can't let it happen. He can't!

"Even heathens only reserved this punishment for the very gravest of sins," Ferrante tells him casually, as Alfonso rubs his wrists raw and bleeding in a matter of seconds. "The Germanic tribes to the north committed Severance merely by pulling the victims apart until they died. Some had a set distance they could pull them, and if they survived it meant their gods had pardoned them. Our Roman ancestors were, as you would expect, far more efficient."

"Father, please! Don't do this, father, don't take her away from me, she's mine, you can't do that!"

"Listen to him, Grisendora." Ferrante clicks his tongue and shakes his head. "Like an infant who thinks he owns the toy his father gave him. Are we ready?"

Alfonso can't turn his head to see whether his father was answered with a nod or a shake of the head. He feels like he's upside down, like the world is spinning around him and the iron beneath his body is floating out to sea. They're really going to do it. It was actually happening.

_Kill you all_ , he thinks. _I'll kill you all. I'll rape your wives and children in front of you and make you watch when I gut them. I'll slaughter everyone you've ever met. I'll burn villages to the ground and lock the inhabitants inside their houses when I do it. I'll end your fucking worlds for this._

"Alfonso!" Whelinei screams. "Alfonso!"

"Drop the blade!"

As the King commands, so his subjects obey. A horrible noise sounds above them as each link of chain scrapes against the support beams, and as he sees the blade fall between him and Whelinei, he feels his bladder empty, and he shuts his eyes—just as the cocoon across from his breaks open.

When the blade hits the ground, there's a terrible crash of metal on stone.

But no pain.

The blade has dropped, and yet there is no pain. Alfonso opens his eyes. He can still feel Whelinei's fear, anger and determination through their link, and the pain in her mouth from where she's chewed away parts of her cage and the ends have cut her muzzle.

Grisendora is laughing her ugly bald head off.

"Alfonso," Ferrante addresses him, chortling to himself while his hand strokes the length of his daemon's wing. "You didn't think that this device actually still worked, did you? Whatever method the ancients used to make this blade cut the bond between man and daemon has been long lost. It's just a length of metal."

"It did the trick though, if we do say so ourselves," Grisendora adds. "Look, Ferrante. She's settled."

Whelinei pushes herself out of the mesh cocoon, trembling and growling at the same time. She's not the largest daemon in the world, but she's certainly too large for Grisendora to lift anymore, and her powerful jaw is filled with fangs strong enough to break metal. She creeps forward with her head low, her sleek black mane above it.

Alfonso's seen this creature before.

A hyena.

She doesn't run up and embrace him, but stalks to his side and stands in front of him, still growling. A powerful predator. She's definitely settled now, and a part of him is pleased.

Another part feels the warm patch between his legs rapidly cooling, and the humiliation is such that had he been free in this moment, he'd be strangling the nearest person.

"So she has. We shall arrange a feast for later. You have proven yourself today, Alfonso, but you must also remember: God has proven again and again that I am his chosen, and everything I do I do in His name and with His blessing. So there is nothing I 'can't' do, and no 'sin' I can commit. Do you understand?"

"I understand, Father," Alfonso says. Whelinei shakes with anger beside him. "I trust that I too, shall become the Lord's chosen, after today. Whelinei and I."

_Two swords_ , he thinks. _One for Father; one for Grisendora._

When the time comes, he has to kill Grisendora first, or she'll explode before he gets the chance to skewer her. Ferrante is still alive when he gets the second blade though. He makes sure of that. The look on his father's face when he realises God did not save him from having his very soul run through by his own son is worth a hundred years of suffering.

No one else cares for Ferrante's sake. Sixtus is pleased; and even in the desperate position he's in, that prick Lorenzo doesn't try to scold him for killing his own father; that's how bad the man was. When Lorenzo accuses him of being just the same, he practically spits with anger, but Whelinei is more philosophical about it.

"If nothing else, they did teach us brutality well," she tells him. "We'd even have put Lorenzo in that contraption if we'd been able to access it. We might have used it on him if we knew how it worked. You did enjoy abusing Kalaiola, after all. The main difference between us and Ferrante is that we will now know how not to create someone like us, who might destroy us."

"The Ottoman Empire might destroy us come tomorrow morning," he points out. "So it's rather a moot fucking point."

"Maybe da Vinci's plan will work," she says, and maybe it will. Relying on a fucking sodomite like da Vinci and his bird—he hates all bird daemons now, the way they're able to stretch their bond is just unnatural—pricks at him. But it'll be his own fault if he dies on the sword of a Turk.

Blame always lies with the one too weak to stop whatever catastrophe happens to them. That was the way of the world; the way of their world—his and Whelinei's, and that went for him, his father, Lorenzo, da Vinci, and even that fucking slave toy who left her mark on him. He couldn't stop that from happening, fair enough, but it wasn't his fault she'd been too weak to fight him without a whoreson Florentine shit-stabber to help her.

Speaking of whom...

"—while she's locked up!"

"Why do you let this _artista_ dictate your every move, Lorenzo? Is a common charlatan running your republic for you now? No wonder the Duke of Urbino was able to take it so easily."

"I'd sooner see da Vinci in charge of my city than you, your _Holiness_ ," Lorenzo is walking side by side with Sixtus; da Vinci, his father and his mongrel friend trailing along behind them as they enter the room. "If that is who you really are."

"I'd take care if I were you, _Magnifico_ ," Sixtus spits out. "If you do decide to stay here then by tomorrow you'll be dead, and the fate of your eternal soul does not look promising."

Da Vinci folds his arms and leans against a wall. "Well, if Lorenzo's soul is in jeopardy, I'd hate to see what's going to happen to _yours_."

It's moderately amusing for Alfonso to watch this squabbling, for he despises everyone involved. On the other hand, there's a massive fleet of heathens about to sack one of his cities, and he hasn't the time for this.

"I thought you were leaving," he interrupts, sneering at Sixtus.

He might have killed his father to maintain his alliance with Sixtus, but only because he hated Lorenzo more; he knows very well that Sixtus is as bad if not worse than Ferrante was. The main reason he counts Girolamo Riario as his friend is because he knows Riario understands what it is to be under the thumb of such a man, even if he thinks _his_ monster has that right.

And right now he hates Sixtus more than Lorenzo, because at least Lorenzo and his charlatan are not running away with their tails tucked between their legs. Plus, Girolamo is not here, which may be da Vinci's fault, or it may be Sixtus', right now he doesn't want to know.

Sixtus' daemon Jetariel hisses at him from her human's arms, looking stupid as shit with the little jewelled silver bonnet on her head. Sixtus grits his teeth.

"The souls of all Christendom are my concern," he says. "Not just those of this town. But have a care, for the representative of God on Earth may choose to punish sinners by any method that pleases him, and if I think your souls are in too much peril..." he glares hard at Alfonso here, "A simple _cut_ could very well rectify the issue."

Alfonso's breath catches in his throat and he feels phantom restraints circling his wrists. The cold bite of iron against his back. How the fuck does Sixtus know about that!? Did Ferrante tell him?

And what does he mean by 'could'? Ferrante had never been able to get his ghastly machine to work, and had said the church destroyed all those it found. Not that Alfonso would have been surprised to discover that Sixtus had one lurking around the Vatican, but to actually use it... surely whatever the crime, it isn't worth the public outcry that would result from news of such a punishment being meted out?!

Or does 'God's representative on Earth' not have to worry about such things?

"Alfonso?"

He glares at Lorenzo for talking to him, and then glares harder for the man daring to look concerned. Probably not for him, he grants, but nevertheless it annoys him. Sixtus had left already while Alfonso had been standing there.

_Weak_ , he tells himself. _You'll need to do better than that if you want to stave off this invasion._

"Alfonso, did he mean what I think he meant?"

This time it's da Vinci talking to him, and Alfonso has no idea what he thinks Sixtus meant, but the artist's daemon elaborates before he can punch him for it.

"Does Sixtus have a _Machina Intercisione_?" she asks him fearfully.

Whelinei snarls and leaps forward. "What the hell do you know about that, you piece of shit!?" she roars at her.

To his surprise, the badger daemon of Lorenzo's notary creeps forward and growls at Whelinei, and it seems to surprise da Vinci too, but it's Lorenzo who asks—

"What is it you just said?"

"Something the Turk warned me about," says da Vinci, frowning. "But I didn't think such things existed."

"Oh, they do," Alfonso informs him, pleased to know something da Vinci doesn't. "I don't know if Sixtus has a working one, but I wouldn't put it past him to use something like it if you pissed him off enough."

Da Vinci looks right into his eyes and takes a few steps towards him, arms raised as a gesture of peace. Alfonso has no idea what he's doing, but given that da Vinci is pretty much his only asset at the moment, he allows him to do so without ripping his smug face off.

"If he does..." da Vinci begins, deadly serious. "If he does, and we make it out of here alive... would you be willing to help me find the device—"

So he can figure out how it works and replicate one for Lorenzo? A snowball had a better chance in Hell than this sodomite had of Alfonso helping him do that.

"—and destroy it."

Well, when he put it like that.

The weight of the swords on Alfonso's back have replaced the iron cross that had plagued his nightmares for decades, as the crunch of bone between her jaws has erased the taste of the wire cocoon from Whelinei. They itch to use their strength on anyone who has anything to do with the 'device'. A fuck like that deserves far worse than Alfonso's sword.

Two swords. One for a man. One for his daemon.

 

 

Velayli is an odd daemon.

All daemons are unique in their own way, of course, that's part of the beauty of the natural world, but the beauty of Velayli is an unnerving kind, the beauty that comes from the exhilaration of fear, and that saddens Leonardo, and it angers him.

He remembers struggling through his guilt to ask Nico for every detail he could remember when they first learned of Riario's involvement in their story; for above all things what his daemon looked like, and he remembers Nico shaking his head fearfully.

At first he'd been worried Nico was still too raw to answer his questions, and told himself the answers could wait another night, however important, but there was more of a disturbed tinge to that fear and less a pained one, and Lontalye had said,

"He did have a daemon, Nico. She was just hiding."

"You didn't see his daemon?" Leonardo had asked.

Nico had shook his head and Zo had put a hand on his shoulder and rubbed it.

"Probably a rat he keeps stuffed down his shirt," he'd said, voice dark with anger. "Or a dung beetle."

"I don't think so," Nico had replied.

Leonardo remembers sighing and wracking his brain. It isn't easy to extrapolate just from rumours he's heard about a man as to what kind of daemon he might have; different people reflect different aspects of the same animals. The Turk has a scorpion on his shoulder, but that only means he has a deadly sting, it doesn't tell you what he uses it for.

Like with Zoroaster's tarot cards, there are inverse meanings to every daemon.

He'd heard Count Riario called a snake so often that that had seemed a good bet; and she'd have been easy to hide as a snake as well. At the same time it had seemed odd for the Vatican to favour a man with a snake for a daemon. There's nothing explicit about such things in scripture, but a stigma exists in pretty much every culture that follows the god of Abraham.

Perhaps not entirely without reason; Ima's striped snake daemon still plagues his dreams, though in her culture snakes seemed to be revered.

When he had finally seen Riario's daemon at Lorenzo's reception, he'd almost been disappointed.

"What do you see?" Riario had asked him. Leonardo had looked around immediately for the man's daemon, and not seen it. What he had seen was a man who'd made himself his enemy, threatened Florence and its sovereignty, abducted and tortured Nico, and who had the strangest eyes he'd seen up to that point. Dark in some lights; jade green in others.

(A green he'd seen before; but that's a revelation for another time)

He'd been paying so much attention to Riario and his eyes, watching for a little rustle that would precede something poking its head out of a sleeve or collar, that he would have missed Velayli entirely if he hadn't been keeping an eye on Silestrana as well. She'd been admiring the architecture while Leonardo tried to get a feel for the Count. One second he'd seen her standing on the stone banister, cocking her head. Then he'd looked back a few seconds later, and suddenly there'd been a large black cat sitting behind her, licking its paw.

"Silestrana," he'd murmured, and she'd glanced behind herself, screamed, and flew back onto his shoulder. The corner of Riario's lips had twitched, but he hadn't said a word. Velayli hadn't moved at all.

At the time he'd thought of her in terms of how she looked next to the Medici; Lorenzo's leopard, Clarice's lion, Giuliano's rhino—even the dancer with the python daemon had seemed more impressive at a glance. Certainly his own beautiful Silestrana put any dull cat to shame.

But Leonardo isn't usually wont to pay nature no more than a glance. Something had been odd about Velayli from the beginning, because in order to creep up behind Silestrana like that, and in order to have been out of Nico's line of sight during his capture, she'd have had to have moved far enough away from Riario that neither of them saw her coming.

And non-avian daemons aren't usually able to travel so far away from their humans. Somehow though, Velayli is almost able to travel as far away from Riario as Silestrana is from Leonardo.

But now, as Riario limps into his cabin to comment on his treatment of the brazen head and supposed talent for compounded disaster, she follows at his heels as you'd expect. She's been lingering closer to him ever since Zita died.

Silestrana shudders a little when Velayli hops up next to her on the table, likely remembering the cat's claws digging into her wings, her weight pressing down on her back as she'd yowled furiously for Akamanthos. But Silestrana also has her pride, and doesn't fly back to Leonardo's shoulder this time.

Velayli purrs and stretches out her head to rub her cheek against Silestrana's wing.

"Stop that," Riario commands her.

Leonardo chooses not to mention how that's not the first time since Zita's death that Velayli has done that, and not just with Silestrana but with Lontalye as well. He knows what it means; he neither likes nor hates Riario enough to bring it up with him, and neither, he finds, does he entirely mind it.

There's a low hissing from Velayli as she turns away, but Leonardo can't tell who she's hissing at.

"I'm not afraid of her," lies Silestrana.

Riario smiles, eyes downcast. "I would never have made that claim. Nevertheless, it's hardly appropriate."

"Are we discussing propriety now?" Leonardo asks him.

There's eye-contact between the two of them once more. Riario pauses for what seems like a long time before replying.

"What would be proper, I believe, is for you to return to your Maestro. As I shall return to mine."

It's shameful for a genius to admit, but Leonardo truly struggles to understand what Riario has just told him. The obvious explanation is so ludicrous that his mind makes the leap that Riario must have had some instructor in his youth he feels he can still trust, and is going to go back to him for guidance, which would be all very well and good, but first he has to make sure.

"You're... going back to Rome?"

"I will throw myself entirely on the Pope's mercy."

No, no, no, no, no! Riario might as well have said he was going to go find a tree and hang himself from it as soon as they got back, that's how bad his plan is! The man made him kill his own mother, for fuck's sake, what the hell does he think was going to happen!?

It's surreal. Sickeningly surreal, because in that moment none of the terrible things Riario has done mean anything to Leonardo—the resignation he'd heard in Riario's voice when he'd spoken of his mother's death at his own hands is one of the worst things that's ever met Leonardo's ears, and he can hardly remember any of Riario's crimes against him when that atrocity is staring him in the face.

_"I saw the recognition in her eyes, Artista. Her daemon called Velayli by name, and we both know there's only one way he could have known her name."_

_"She... was your mother?"_

What kind of damage could one lowly Jewish prostitute have inflicted on the Papacy? It certainly hadn't been a 'necessary' evil on behalf of the church to kill that woman. And how could Sixtus have known Riario would realise she was his mother? It hadn't even been some sadistic test of loyalty either.

No, Sixtus could only have done it for his own sick amusement; there's no other possible motive. A man like that does not have mercy. A man like that will only hurt Riario more, for no gain but the pleasure of hurting him, and Riario must know that; it's fucking obvious to anyone!

... of course he knows that. That's the worst thing, isn't it?

"You do know," Leonardo manages to force out, "Sixtus may show you none?"

Riario's lips twitch into a split-second false smile. But he isn't the one who answers.

"Well," whispers Velayli. "Perhaps it would be as much as we deserve... for worshipping false idols."

_No,_ Leonardo wants to tell them. But at that moment—

"Land ho!"

At last. Even though it can't entirely drive the feelings of horror from his heart, Leonardo's soul lifts when she hears the words she's longed for. She flies out of the door at once, almost brushing Riario though he ducks her swiftly, and out onto the deck. Leonardo follows, and as he does, he sees Velayli running alongside him out of the corner of his eye.

Feeling the sea air against his skin after so long cooped up in that cabin feels amazing. He hears the cries of gulls; including Niofera, who swoops around Silestrana to taunt her before dipping back down to the deck—Amerigo is currently nowhere to be seen but that's no matter. Piza lies before them, and home is just beyond their reach.

Just behind him, Riario climbs onto the deck and looks out across the water with him. His presence tugs Leonardo back from the elation he should feel returning to a place he'd feared he'd never see again. That elation is within his sights, but the itch to fix another problem that shouldn't have to happen holds him back a little longer. He remembers something Nico had said, when he'd confided in him about his journey with the Count.

"Your mother's daemon," Leonardo begins, and speaking of impropriety he's indulging in a kind that's mind-boggling even for him right now, but once he decides to start something... "was he a rabbit?"

"You've been talking to Nico," Riario guesses. Leonardo waits for him to go on. He smiles. "No, he was a jay. Velayli held him in her claws and told him it wouldn't take long. To this day, I've wondered why he didn't try to cry for help."

Leonardo frowns.

"The rabbit..." Riario sighs. "That's not a daemon. And you'll have to trust me when I say it's not a mystery worth your time either."

"Trust you?" muses Leonardo. "Well, everyone knows I like to live dangerously."

Riario smirks. "For now, you're in no danger from me. It felt surprisingly... civilised, to be your ally."

With a little shriek, Silestrana returns to Leonardo's shoulder. She'd probably been so distracted by the thought of getting off the ship she'd forgotten that he is functionally alone with Riario, who could probably kill him at any moment, and unless his memory was failing him had promised to do just that should they leave without the Book of Leaves. Which they had.

And yet right now Leonardo is still more afraid for Riario than of him. And so he gives him one last chance to let Leonardo help him; to help himself.

"Perhaps. But as soon as we reach land, any alliance we might have had will be over."

_Unless you say otherwise. Unless you pull yourself free from that monster's clutches once and for all. Even you deserve better than this!_

He waits for Riario to give him such an assurance. But he doesn't, nor does he make any answer at all. Perhaps he literally can't, after so many years in Sixtus' chains. Perhaps Sixtus' cage is much like the one Dracula had the Abyssinian in.

At any rate, he nods to Leonardo, and leaves.

"Goodbye, _Psittacida_ ," whispers Velayli, so low Leonardo can barely hear her. He's not sure he's ever actually heard her speak until today.

A fresh wind blows his damnably long hair into his face, urging him to turn it away from Riario and towards the shore. There's nothing he can do.

But the shadow still lingers in his mind.

"Why is it so easy," he asks Silestrana, "for us to envision machines that can perform impossible tasks—to fly, and dive, and climb, and create all sorts of wonders that have literally helped to shape the very history of this land... and yet, the one thing we can't do..." He trails off. She knows what he means anyway.

"Solve the destructive nature of men?" Silestrana wonders. "An interesting idea. I think it's a little outside our field though. Besides, if we did that, there'd be no need for us to create the wonders we do create to combat it."

"Is the creation of those wonders really worth it?" Leonardo responds, a little incredulous.

Silestrana shifts on his shoulder. "Since we can't drive evil out of the hearts of men, it's a moot point. No one can do that, and those who say they can, end up following men like Sixtus."

He can hear her dismissal of Riario. She's not the part of them that holds anything but contempt for people like him. And yet, he sees her track Velayli with her gaze, as she wanders from her human towards Lontalye. The thought of her eventual fate is not sitting easy with her.

"We'll never see him again, will we?" he murmurs, hand rising to stroke Silestrana's feathers.

It would have been so much easier if he'd been right about that one.

 

 

It's natural to think of one's family just before the axe falls, Piero tells himself. There aren't many who wouldn't. But the family his mind keeps coming back to is not his real family at all; not his dutiful wife, nor the legitimate newborn the Lord has finally blessed him with. No, he thinks of the woman with the breathtaking blue and yellow bird on her shoulder; and the boy who had the same bird, only in red.

Oroe stands beside him, pressed to his leg for comfort, but not clinging to him like a coward. She feels brave right now, brave because however ordinary she is there was a time she caught the attention of that blue bird, and there was a time she birthed the red one, and now she keeps the company of leopards and lions. Lorenzo went out of his way to ask Ferrante to spare their life, and that means more than the fact that Ferrante refused them.

In the box Ferrante sits in, Alfonso's daemon Whelinei laughs uproariously at the King's pronouncement. A look from Ferrante's vulture silences her. It makes Piero think briefly of what the Duchess told them in their cell; that Ferrante had made Alfonso take this same test once.

He can't quite comprehend it.

He's never made, and never will make a claim to being a perfect, or even a good father. To Leonardo he accepts he's even worse than that, but there is no compulsion for him to be anything better to a bastard; not in the laws of man at any rate. Oroe sometimes reminds him that it's not Leonardo's fault he's a bastard, though even she can't defend the things that _are_ his fault.

It's not right that he and Leonardo should be father and son. However much he might marvel at the boy's genius, it only serves to remind him that he'll never understand it. His own son is unthinkably alien to him, and his chaos threatens the security of Piero's legitimate family.

But to put Leonardo through something like this... at first the thought sickens him. Then it almost brings a smile because if it had been Leonardo standing in that noose he can't imagine Ferrante would get the best of him—not that he'd admit it to the boy or anything.

Then he remembers where he is, and he nods his readiness to Lorenzo. And he is as ready as he'll ever be, he supposes.

_If I only could have seen her one last time. If I only could have asked her why..._

"You choose today of all days to admit they broke our heart," Oroe muses under her breath. "Typical."

"Hush, you," he commands, but he can't bring himself to let any malice into his voice. "We should never have done it."

"Admitted it, or been with them in the first place?"

"Hush."

The answer's 'yes' to both questions.

The horse is loosed, and Lorenzo lines his shot up. It's harder to keep his eyes open, but he must.

"Ask her why she left, or ask her why she bothered with us in the first place?"

"This is why you settled as a badger," Piero complains.

Again, the answer's 'yes'.

His heart beats in tandem with the galloping of the horses hooves. A part of him doesn't want to watch, but he more than owes Lorenzo his support in this, and so he stands as tall and strong as he can manage. He knows he's neither, but for Lorenzo's sake he has to try.

Pain, blood loss and starvation have been plaguing his employer. He'd seen Alfonso's hyena bite the restrained Kalaiola on their way in, and she too has been affected by what's happened. Though she seems hale—if still partially covered in the black dye Verocchio disguised her with—her manner is all over the place and Piero doesn't know what had affected him more, hearing her cry for Isilence in her sleep or hearing her beg Hippolyta's daemon not to leave her after the Duchess visited them.

Still, she and her human are defiant. Piero is proud to work for them. He thinks of that and of Caterina, and her I-know-something-you-don't-know smile, of Leonardo showing him a shield and proclaiming it finished, of how he turned around and stormed out of the room without a word the day the boy's daemon settled—too early, always wanting everything too soon, that boy—too similar to the daemon that used to tease Oroe by flying higher than she could ever reach.

He thinks of that little look of pride on Leonardo's face the day he contested that hustler's testimony. He clutches onto the wooden beams before him to watch his fate unfold.

_"God damn you for dying before me!"_

The arrow flies.

The horse drops.

"NO!" Alfonso screams, as his wife laughs and claps her hands. Whelinei practically shrieks with rage, only to receive a mean peck from her mother that's harsh enough to snap Alfonso from his anger as well as his daemon.

Piero can't quite believe what has just happened.

"Now, Ferrante! No. More. Games!"

No more games indeed. Piero's face is stretched into a grin bigger than he can ever remember having had before, leaning against the wall and looking up at Lorenzo with amazement and admiration. The guards begin to push him away. Towards safety.

"I knew he could do it," Oroe claims.

"You knew nothing of the sort," he tells her.

"I did," she protests, and there's always been a childishness in her when it comes to arguments. "You just didn't want to believe me. Why do you always have to be so cynical?"

"Why do you expect me to be otherwise? You're supposed to be my soul, badger. You should know why I'm cynical. Anyway, I never said he couldn't do it."

"Didn't you? I seem to remember you making a whole barrel of dying wishes just a few moments ago."

"Hush," he tells her.

Not that he can't argue with his daemon over the most ridiculous minutiae for hours, but Lorenzo is stepping down from the gallows and Kalaiola is released to his side, limping, but not as badly as he is. Right now, Piero has to help the man who just saved his life.

He allows Lorenzo to rest some of his weight against him—not without its difficulties; Lorenzo is heavily built and Piero is neither that nor as young as he used to be. But he manages, and he's still grinning as he does so.

"Magnifico," he says. "You did it, Magnifico! You did it!"

"Giuliano?" Lorenzo mutters, looking from side to side as if he expects his dead brother to appear before him as a reward for his triumph. "Giuliano. I pretended it was Giuliano riding Isilence, Piero. What a terrible person I am."

Kalaiola turns her head back. "Don't tell him that," she hisses.

Lorenzo doesn't listen. "That stupid bastard. Why did they leave us?"

"Piero," says Oroe, the kind of thing she says when she has nothing else to say, which is rare. They stumble into the corridor and Piero sighs. He's never lost a brother. But he has been left.

"He didn't leave you, Lorenzo," he tells the younger man. "He was taken. And you have the chance now to answer the one who took him in kind."

Bravely, almost too brave for the likes of him, he thinks, Oroe scampers forward a little and rubs her head against Kalaiola in comfort. Piero is afraid the leopard will simply swat her away, but instead she just looks at her with surprise and goes back to walking forward. Though perhaps she walks with her head a little higher than before.

Ferrante sends a doctor to tend to Lorenzo once they reach the guest chambers that have been assigned to them, and Lorenzo and his daemon sleep. Piero doesn't blame them, he feels exhausted himself, but more than that he feels he must watch over this man for now.

He almost lays a hand on his employer's forehead. Almost.

It would be far too inappropriate to assume...

"What's this?" Oroe asks him. "Paternal feelings, for a man who shares blood with our son?"

"I should strap your mouth shut, you pest," Piero tells her.

"You miss Leonardo?"

"Of course not!"

"I do. Didn't you think that if he'd been here he'd have had us out of the trap in two minutes and probably had Ferrante in the noose himself. Maybe glued him to a pig and cast an image of it in the sky over Naples."

Piero snorts. "Probably would have gotten us all killed even sooner, and then escaped himself and danced on our graves."

"He wouldn't. Well, Silestrana might."

Lorenzo shifts and frowns in his sleep. Piero does miss Leonardo, somehow. They were never meant to walk in the same circles, and yet his circle is somehow too silent without the boy.

"We shouldn't have thrown his canvas out, just because we were angry at her," Oroe tells him.

For a moment he's still. Then he looks out the window and down into the courtyard below, where King Ferrante and his son are attended by a half-dozen guards. He sees Alfonso say something to his father, his body language imploring even as his daemon hangs back defensively. Ferrante says something back that makes him cringe and retreat behind his daemon.

"No. I suppose we shouldn't have," he says. "Anyway, it doesn't matter now. She's gone."

"Not if Leonardo finds her. Then perhaps we'll finally have an outlet for this anger."

But when they see her standing of the deck of the ship next to the son of the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire; Borophoros the same sapphire-blue that haunts their dreams and perched on her shoulder, it's not anger they feel.

 

 

"I must admit, I didn't think she'd be a cat," Carlo says casually, pouring Riario a glass of wine. The Count barely glances at it, and certainly doesn't register what it means before he returns to rocking back and forth and stroking his daemon; gently, but obsessively at the same time.

He doesn't say anything.

" 'That snake', Clarice called you. Snake, snake, snake—and before that I heard them call you the Pope's 'attack dog'. One or the other, I thought. Maybe a wolf. But she's a funny looking thing."

Riario still says nothing.

The night is cool and draughts blow into their underground... what can Carlo call it that doesn't sound stupid? Labyrinth, he supposes. The bare cave walls drip with moisture that falls into the little stream. They sit on fine velvet-backed chairs on ornate Persian rugs, drinking from silver cutlery while beetles and spiders run along the muddy rocks around them.

Carlo sips from his glass and smiles. He can tell Chelicye has her eye on Riario's daemon's tail; it's unusually long and Chelicye likes to grab her friends' tails as a joke—when they have them. Tails, that is. And friends too, he supposes. He doesn't know that the cat would appreciate it, though. She's looking a bit out of it.

"What was her name again?"

It takes a while for Riario to realise he's being asked a question. He blinks, looks at Carlo, then at his daemon and then at Carlo again before recognition dawns in his eyes.

"Velayli," he tells him, hoarsely. "Her name is Velayli."

Honestly, Carlo is surprised he's this coherent. But then, he joined his brothers willingly, so he hasn't experienced the induction Riario has. He only has how he's seen others react to their initiation for comparison.

"This is Chelicye," Carlo returns.

He waits for Riario to take in the appearance of his daemon in before he asks his next question, watching those damaged eyes try to focus on her ivory fur, lock on with her dark orbs. Once he's certain that Riario will understand him, he asks:

"Would you like to hold her?"

As if everything in the room has frozen, sound as well as movement seems to cease, and it all goes even colder than before. Riario has frozen still, staring at Carlo as if he'd suggested they have a quick fuck to get to know one another; which Carlo supposes actually seems less outlandish to someone like Riario than what he has asked.

But Riario must learn that what he knows as 'outlandish', 'blasphemous', or 'sinful', is based on the fairy tales of a few demented goat-herders who lived in a distant desert thousands of years ago. It isn't just that the stories never happened. It's that what they teach isn't true either.

And experience is the best teacher.

"I'll keep Velayli safe," he assures him. He doesn't reach out for the cat just yet; to do so would agitate Riario more than was necessary. Riario would come around. They always did.

No doubt what Carlo has just added to his wine will help. He takes advantage of Riario's stunned demeanour to hold the chalice up to the other man's lips and prompt him to drink. He does; Carlo guesses he's glad for some kind of distraction.

Two red droplets spill out over his bottom lip and onto his newly shaven jaw. Carlo reaches over to dab them away, trying to maintain eye-contact with eyes that strive to avoid it.

"Has anyone else ever touched Velayli?"

He knows the answer's 'yes' before he asks. It was one of the things they learned while Riario was still on the rack.

"Yes," Riario tells him. "My father. And... another, but that was... I don't..."

Don't want to ever go through that again, Carlo can tell he's trying to say. He cups Riario's face with his right hand, so he can't avoid eye-contact again.

"He was very cruel to her, wasn't he?" Carlo asks. "And to you?"

Riario doesn't even have to move for the 'yes' to be understood.

"My father was cruel too. In a different way, but still. You and I are very much alike. I can show you how to properly touch another's daemon."

Riario is still incredulous. "How to... ?"

"You can't just grab at it like a child grabbing for its mother's skirts," Carlo tells him, chuckling. "Here, this will be an easy one because Chelicye will help, won't you, girl?"

Chelicye yips cheerfully and nudges Velayli's tail. The cat shudders and looks up, seeming alarmed for about two seconds before she drops her head again. Riario pauses only for a moment before he resumes stroking her.

Carlo pulls his chair closer and picks Chelicye up in his hands, putting her onto the table. She turns onto her back with her paws in begging position, tongue lolling and bushy tail wagging like that of a domestic dog. Carlo rubs her belly, but keeps looking at and increasingly agitated Riario.

"It's easy enough," he assures him. "First you make sure the other person is also in contact with their daemon—like so." He scratches Chelicye a little more vigorously. "Then, you initiate physical contact with them."

He puts his hand over Riario's, and it stills instantly. Not entirely still, mind you, because he's trembling, but Carlo presses his fingers into the other man's hand enough to get a grip on it and begins moving it along Velayli's fur again. Riario's hand is cold, but it won't be for long.

"You remember what you learned on the rack, Girolamo?" he asks him softly. "What you saw? We are one. All of us. We don't exist in pairs, but as a whole. Velayli is as much a part of us as you, and we as much a part of you as she. You will see."

"But—"

"Shh. I know it's hard at first." Gently, he pulls Riario's hand away from Velayli and towards Chelicye, steeling himself inwardly for what's about to happen. "But it will get easier."

The unfamiliar presence is lowered, carefully, carefully, onto Chelicye's stomach. She jerks a little, as their privacy is invaded, but only a little because the presence of Riario isn't threatening while he's in this state.

The other man's pupil's dilate. He can see Carlo now, and Carlo can feel him. Chelicye extends tendrils of herself to accept him and pull him to them, so he can see they have no wish to hurt him.

Not that they _won't_ hurt him. They will. But they won't _enjoy_ it. It simply has to be done.

"There," he says, and smiles. "That's not so bad, is it?"

"Please..."

He can tell Riario doesn't know what he's asking for. He ignores him, and starts moving his hand over Chelicye with the same rhythm he'd been stroking Velayli with. Velayli doesn't look up, but she makes a pitiful, distressed cry that pleads with them as much as her human does.

"It's all right, Velayli," Chelicye tells her. "We won't hurt you."

With his other hand, Carlo reaches out for the cat, but changes direction to grab Riario's shoulder when it looks like he's about to shy back from the touch.

"We are one, brother," he tells him.

Riario implores him with his eyes and shakes his head slightly. Carlo keeps looking into those eyes when he rests his hand on Velayli, and she and her human seize up.

Now Carlo sees Riario as well, and takes stock of the images his mind uses to process the sensation of touching an unfamiliar soul. Fragments of light sit broken in a still black sea of guilt. They sink when he approaches them. There's a desperate confusion in the water, like oil, floating over heavy dark shards of violent thoughts that have sunk to the bottom.

And in the desolation something new has taken root; like a twining plant, creeping its way in. This presence is familiar to Carlo, because he too is a part of it. It's the root that lives at the centre of the Labyrinth.

Chelicye shuffles aside a little so Riario can rest his head on the table. He's in some distress, and the image of his soul is shaking with Carlo's touch. Carlo lifts Velayli bodily into his own lap to help her avoid being hurt accidentally when Riario tips forward.

"She's softer than Hilensius would have been," Chelicye sighs.

A smidge of anger strikes at Carlo's heart.

"Don't mention them now," he says. "They were just like the rest of them at heart. Coveting their reputation; treating affection like a commodity with which they were the worst of misers. Always about them."

"Keep telling yourself that," his daemon laughs.

He ignores her. "You understand that, don't you, Girolamo? What would you say to the idea of killing your father? As we killed ours?"

Riario is concentrating on breathing right now. Chelicye asks him a different question.

"Why is there a rabbit in your head, darling?"

A rabbit? Carlo hadn't seen that—usually you can't see things as complex as animals in someone's soul until you'd really dug deep, but Velayli is so broken now it must be much easier for Chelicye to—oh yes, there it is. Carlo sees it now.

He concentrates on it. It's important to Riario, and he's been asked to make this assessment reasonably thorough.

"I see them," he says. "Why are they here, Girolamo?"

"The..." it's difficult for Riario to speak, and Carlo appreciates that, so he's patient. "The... it was... a long time... we had been called to attend to an incident in Bohemia..."

"Why?"

So he can see Riario's face, he leans over him. Memories are rushing past him inside their newly forming soul bond, but he's nowhere near close enough to interpret them, only get a sense of a desire, and an epiphany. Riario is crying.

"A pompous _idiot_ named Kramer... the inquisitor for that region was stirring up trouble concerning witches. Villagers killing cats by dashing their heads against an anvil. One of them was just a kitten; pure white... until the blood..."

He swallows.

"We saw its mother watching from afar. A white cat. There was nothing... nothing she could have done, but she made herself watch until it was over."

"As you did."

"Yes. As we did. As we always do. We saw her the next morning; she'd come across a rabbit's den while the rabbits were just outside it... she killed one of the does—ripped its throat out. The kit tried to get away, but she caught it and dragged it back."

"She killed the kit as well?"

Riario frowns. His hand stills on Chelicye's fur.

"No..." he tells Carlo. "No, she didn't. That was... that was it. She took it in, let it suckle from her. We'd never heard of anything like it happening before, but we knew why she did it. We knew."

Carlo understands now too.

"And that's what you've always wanted. A kit of your very own that he wouldn't make you hurt. Only, you know he'd never let you have one."

"I don't... I don't deserve..."

"You've tried so hard to get one. But your cousin turned out too much like you and so you couldn't help but hate her. The boy was always da Vinci's, even after you tried to make him yours. And you couldn't protect your lover anymore than any of the others."

"Zita..."

"You have surprising kindness in you, Girolamo. But you've never been able to express it, and you never will."

Carlo sighs. What comes next will be difficult, but he can see things in Riario's soul that he knows their enemies can take advantage of. He sees bridges left unburned that da Vinci or another could still pull Riario across. He sees the parts of Riario that will never be part of the Labyrinth, and this is no story where a man might follow a piece of string to find his way out if he defeats enough monsters.

This is the price of the sins of Deadalus.

"That's why," he assures him, removing his hand from Riario's in order to stroke his hair, "it will be better for you when all that has been taken away."

Chelicye sighs and lets her head fall against the table.

Velayli digs her claws into his leg.

But it hurts her far more than it hurts him.

 

 

"You did sign it, didn't you?"

This can't be happening. This can't be happening.

Aberlynn, Dragonetti's daemon, turns her head to Lontalye immediately, because she may not be a genius of detection like Silestrana, but her instincts are good enough for the Captain of the Officers of the Night. Vanessa too sees the hints of tension in Nico's shoulders and she hears Sheymir gasp beside her, thankfully not loud enough for anyone else to hear.

How could he have done this to her?

"Forgery is no minor offence," Dragonetti prompts.

That it was not; they'd break Nico on the wheel for that. She has to collect herself quickly to remedy that possibility.

"Of course I did," she tells him, and hopes her statement doesn't sound as false to his ears as it did to hers. "My son is a Medici, after all."

Then again, even if it had he might have ignored it, given what he tells her next.

"With Lorenzo and Clarice both absent, your son is the sole representative of their bloodline. Which makes you, as his mother, the regent head of the House of Medici..."

What?

"... and the most powerful person in all of Florence."

Sheymir almost falls off her shoulder.

Was this what Nico had had in mind when he'd forged that document? It takes everything in her power not to look towards him now and risk Dragonetti deciding that things were too suspicious to let lie. She stands stock still instead, staring like an idiot. A few months ago she'd been a damn barmaid for the love of God, and now...

This can't be happening. They were going to get away from all of this, her and Sheymir, and Giulio and Zyllinia—take some money they'd been saving, go to another city; perhaps Milan or Venice, or leave Italy altogether. Her French was reasonably good, and she had a fair grasp of Latin from her convent days.

No more of these horrors; of being poisoned and losing her friends to Rome's feud with Florence, of watching her lover stabbed to death before her eyes for the Pazzi feud with the Medici, of losing a man who was like a father to her to Leo's damned quest for a magic book and a group of shadows who wanted to keep him from getting it.

Then she'd have been free to be her own person, and raise her son the way she wanted to, and she wouldn't have to see Leo, Nico, Zoroaster... even Clarice, who she can admit some affection for, be killed as well. The power they all seek, or seek to maintain, or the people who they cannot pull themselves away from—it simply isn't worth it.

And worse than that, she now suspects that the Nico she had known might have been killed where she couldn't see it.

" _It's still Lontalye_ ," Sheymir had told her, and less than a week ago at that. _"I know she looks different, but she's no more another daemon than Nico is another human."_

He might have been all too right.

"What do you suggest I do?" she asks Dragonetti. Her knees are feeling weak.

"An interim head of the bank must be appointed, Signorina," he tells her. "And a suitable explanation for Clarice's absence must be given."

Of course it did, but how can she give Clarice's explanation when Clarice had given none to her? The letter in her hands is a set of instructions concerning the running of the city; the words she thought she'd dreamt the night before too vague for her to make sense of. What could that woman possibly have been thinking of?

Was it that she'd feared Lorenzo's reaction to what had happened so much? Lorenzo's daemon rather, from what Hilensius had said? No, Clarice is no coward. It simply makes no sense.

"Lady Orsini has taken funds to help her husband's negotiations with Naples," Nico says, and says as if Dragonetti is an idiot for not knowing this. As if it's not something he just made up on the spot. "She didn't trust anyone else with such an important task, and I don't think we can blame her for that, given what's happened."

Dragonetti nods. "I will inform the Signoria of this new development," he tells them. "Anything else can wait for the meeting tomorrow morning. You should rest, Signorina."

"Thank you, Captain," Vanessa manages to say, the words feeling hollow when she forces them out of her throat.

When Dragonetti bows and turns to leave, Aberlynn stays back a second and peers at the four of them, swishing her pepper grey tail from side to side and making a little growling noise. Lontalye moves in front of them in silence; and she's not quite as tall a dog as Aberlynn, but she's certainly heavier in build. After a moment more of peering at them, Aberlynn backs down and follows her human quietly.

Now Vanessa is alone in the room with Nico, and she doesn't know if this is worse or better than having Dragonetti in there with them. She'd thought that of all people she could trust Nico, and he's just pulled the rug so far out from under her...

"I had to do it, Vanessa," he tells her, calmly.

"Had to... did you know this was going to happen?!"

"No!" Nico sighs and sits down on the bed. "But if you'd tried to take Giulio away they would have come after you, and with the money they have they would have found you, and then you might have been barred from ever seeing him again. Or they might have done worse than that."

"You think you know better than I do what's best for my son!?" she thunders.

"If you think running away with him is best then frankly, yes, I do."

Vanessa shakes her head. "You're not a parent, Nico. You don't understand. If you think just because I'm a woman—"

"It's got nothing to do with you being a woman, Vanessa! Or do you think Piero da Vinci always acts in the best interests of _his_ son? Or your parents, when they sent you to the convent?"

Sheymir spreads his wings on her shoulder. "We would never treat our child the way Leo's father treats him!" he snaps.

"But you still can't protect him by yourself."

"Until right now, I didn't think we _were_ by ourselves."

That shuts Nico up, but only for a second. He takes a deep breath, and Lontalye moves closer to her.

"The fact remains," she says, addressing Vanessa directly—and months ago it wouldn't have seemed odd but now Vanessa feels she's being overly familiar, "that right now Florence will dissolve into anarchy if you and your son aren't here. Carlo was only ever after the Book of Leaves, and that conflict's been moved somewhere else. Duke Federico is dead. By the time Rome or Naples mounts any kind of assault, Lorenzo will have returned."

"And what if he hasn't?" Sheymir asks her. Vanessa suddenly realises her knees are shaking, but she doesn't want to sit down. She feels safer with this distance between her and Nico right now.

Nico doesn't flinch.

"Then Florence will still need a leader. And as citizens, we have a duty to this republic."

Vanessa does flinch, when she hears Nico speak of 'duty'. The Nico she remembers is a friendly and oblivious boy, a boy who'll do anything to help his friends and who hangs on to Leonardo's every word like it was gospel. The Lontalye she remembers is a playful, eager puppy whose eyes follow Silestrana around the room. And Leonardo does what he does for Florence out of love, not duty. Silestrana acts for progress and innovation. They don't speak of duty.

These words are coming from somewhere else. Somewhere far away, on the other side of the world; so far that Vanessa can't see who it is that's saying them. But it's not the Nico she knows, nor his daemon.

"Who _are_ you?" she hears herself ask.

The words had slipped out without thought, she tells herself. She didn't mean them, she tells herself. He's still her friend, she tells herself. The look of hurt on his face cuts her, and Lontalye's sharp whine sends another tremor to her knees. She decides to finally sit down on the bed, but not right next to Nico, not yet.

Sheymir, however, flies right next to Lontalye and stands beside her.

When had they stopped thinking of her as 'Lonty'?

"We're your friend," Nico tells her, looking pointedly into her eyes. "And we had to stop you from making a terrible mistake."

"We love you, Vanessa," Lontalye tells her.

Vanessa's eyes close, suddenly too heavy to keep open. "And I love you," she tells them. "But I don't know what we're going to do."

"We'll figure it out," says Nico. "I learned a lot while I was away."

"On the other side of the world?" she asked.

All throughout her long confinement in the Medici palace Sheymir had whispered comforts along the lines of, 'when Leo and Zo bring Nico back, they'll have so many stories to tell you about the new land they'll discover'. And she'd say, 'of course they will', because she'd never admit her fears that she would never see them again.

And yet she'd ended up with less than a day with Leo and Zo before Andrea's murder, and the time she's spent with Nico since has been wrought with other troubles. She has no idea what happened over there, except that they hadn't found that stupid book and Leo had brought back a golden head that had spoken to him with his mother's voice—though that may just have been the drink talking, when Zo had mentioned it.

"Actually," Nico says, "I think it was probably on the journey over I did most of my learning. Lonty changed the day we washed up on shore." He runs his hands over his daemon's head. "Right after Riario touched her."

Sheymir squawks in horror, and Vanessa freezes.

"Not," Nico adds hastily, "in a bad way, I mean, it was to save her from drowning and he actually let me hold his daemon so I didn't die from separation shock while he did it... I'd rather not think about how he knew that would work."

Neither would Vanessa. It pleases her far more than anything should right now that she can have someone to blame in all this, and at the same time Nico's rush to defend his captor and the man who tried to kill them all several times over bothers her.

"But I learned a lot from him on the _Basilisk_. Things he taught me, and things I'm not sure he realised he was teaching me. Things about the dangers of wanting too much to be loved."

What?

"Lonty..." Sheymir asks, the name no longer feeling right in his beak. "What does that mean?"

Lontalye lifts her head from Nico's knee to look into his eyes.

"It means we have to do what's best for those we love," she says. "Even if they hate us for it."

"But that... that's tyranny!" cries Sheymir, and he flies back to Vanessa's shoulder.

"No, Shey," the other daemon replies. "It's only tyranny if we pretended it was best for you when it was really best for us. But this is what's best, Vanessa. For you, your child, and for Florence. It might not be perfect, but we've learned that wasting time looking for a perfect solution only makes things worse. There's no such thing as perfection. Not in a world inhabited by sin."

'Sin' was another thing Vanessa wouldn't have expected them to be talking about, and when they does they sounds nothing like her old teachers at the convent.

_Riario,_ she tells herself. _This is Riario's doing. He's still Nico. Deep down, he's still Nico._

"Zo doesn't like me talking about this stuff either," Nico admits to her. He sounds so insecure just then that Vanessa wants to reach over and embrace him, but something still holds her back. "I don't think Maestro has noticed, but Zo's been weird ever since he saw the new Lonty. Or he's been just the same as ever, and I'm the one who's been weird."

That is what's happened, as far as Vanessa can see. Nico is another person, and Leo is letting Silestrana's inquisitiveness blind him to things he'd ordinarily have noticed, but Zo at least hadn't changed and even though it was good that someone was looking after Leo right now Vanessa wishes with all her heart that Zo and Katte could be there with them instead.

They'd have known what to do.

And more than Zo, she wishes that Giuliano and Isilence could be there, as much as it hurts to think of them. She remembers the bulk of Isilence shielding them from Pazzi traitors as Giuliano lay dying, and how she burst into a million fragments of light that landed on her dress when Giuliano had closed his eyes. She remembers that massive daemon waiting down in the street beneath her window for them when they made love, Sheymir resting on top of her head.

_"Isn't it difficult for other people to avoid touching her?"_ she'd asked Giuliano once.

And he'd laughed. _"It happens less often than you'd think, but you're right; I do get the odd buffoon stumbling into the old girl. She's got thick skin, though. Unless you're really trying you won't give her more than a nasty shock. The real problem is getting her into narrow corridors."_

Poor Isilence. She'd had almost as bad a temper as her vicious sister, but if Kalaiola has the same insecurities she certainly hides it better. Giuliano's daemon had been ever anxious about her size, about her clumsiness, about how useful she was or wasn't, and she'd put so much stock in her sister's opinion of her that had never been validated until it was too late.

And she'd just been starting to see herself in a new light, and everything had seemed like it could be so... _perfect_ , when she'd been so cruelly ended.

Perhaps, then, it's for the best that Nico had changed, so that the same won't happen to him. Perhaps there is no perfection for their family anymore. Perhaps that had ended the day Silestrana had seen a cuckoo across the plaza and wondered out loud what he portended.

These feelings hurt, and overcome with them, Vanessa finally gives in and leans across the bed to wrap her arms around Nico. She can feel the relief in him when he puts his head on her shoulder.

"I'm sorry I hurt you," he says.

She's still not entirely certain who's talking to her. But she tells herself it's Nico.

If it's anyone else, she's not sure she'll survive what's to come.

 

 

The cold winds of winter have ushered another gloomy day to premature night. Leonardo holds Lucrezia tight against his chest as Silestrana nuzzles the length of her head against Madrolore's smaller frame. Her beak almost brushes Lucrezia's shoulder, but she takes care that it doesn't, because they're not there, not yet, and maybe not ever.

But there is still love between them. And that makes it hard for the both of them.

"Don't do this, Leonardo," she begs.

Silestrana's talons tighten on her human's shoulders and she answers for him. "We have to. If the Enemies of Man get the Book they'll use it to cause untold death and destruction."

"They wouldn't let a single one of us live after that," Leonardo adds. He rests his forehead against her for a second more before he lets her go. Then he turns towards Zo. "Take care of her?" he asks.

Zo rolls his eyes. Katte snorts. "Take care of her, he tells us. Who'll bloody well take care of us, you great pair of twats? I told you this was a bad idea, but you never listen to me, do you?"

"Yeah, yeah," says Zo. Despite everything, he's smiling.

It makes Leonardo smile too. "Take care of him, Lucrezia," he says. "He's a delicate soul."

"Fuck you!" Zo retorts.

Lucrezia laughs a little through her tears. "I'll do my best," she assures him.

"If you die, Silestrana, I really will use your dust as seasoning in a stew; don't think I won't!" Katte snaps, and she also sounds like she's about to cry, which Silestrana doesn't make a mention of.

"Of course not," she says instead. "If I died, the only one who'd be seen with a tramp like you would be Niofera, and I'd never condemn you to that."

"I fucking hate you!" Katte insists. Zo puts a comforting hand on her and turns his head to kiss her shoulder.

Then he takes Lucrezia by the hand and pulls her towards the horses. A part of Leonardo honestly wishes he was going with them, but no matter what dangers await Lorenzo and Alfonso's group he cannot let the Book of Leaves fall into enemy hands.

He looks apprehensively at the mouth of the cave before him.

"You must hurry, my loves," Borophoros tells them, cocking his head. "I cannot stay any longer away from Caterina. Remember what you've learned."

Silestrana scoffs. "Whose daughter do you think I am?" she asks him.

"The daughter of a stubborn badger," he replies, and takes to the air before she can respond.

While his daemon bristles at the comparison to Oroe (and really, if there wasn't so much else on his mind Leonardo would be too), he watches Borophoros fly away and marvels at how far he is able to stretch his bond with Leonardo's mother.

"Think we'll be able to do that one day?" he asks Silestrana.

"I hope so," she replies. "I've lost count of the times I've wanted to leave your sorry arse behind and do some real discovery."

Leonardo laughs. "One day, perhaps."

Right now, they have something more important to attend to. The Book of Leaves is a stone's throw away, Lorenzo needs their help as usual, the entire peninsular is in more danger from the Ottomans, both Sixtuses are more focussed on treating Italy like their personal playground than on helping sort this out and more than all of that Leonardo's blood cries for justice for Andrea and Dialanya.

The agent of the Labyrinth is in the cave; Borophoros saw him enter. It has to be Carlo. It just has to be! Too many of the Enemies' foot soldiers have fallen on Leonardo's blade for them to risk sending anyone but their best this time!

With a deep breath, Leonardo steps into the darkness. The walls are only naturally formed for the first twenty or so metres, after that the place had been carved out by the hands of men; with regular support to avoid the ceiling collapsing. They soon realise they'd had little need to carry their own torch into this darkness; a few metres more and the halls are lit already.

They walk briskly through the tunnels. Leonardo remembers the directions exactly, and Silestrana repeats them anyway as they go. The part of them that's more pronounced in her is excited by the trek—reminded of their journey into the Vault of Heaven and all the wonders as well as all the horrors it had entailed.

This place has only its own maze to confuse those who might try to enter it. Whether or not it is the original Labyrinth built by Deadalus Leonardo does not know, but it is old, and just as in the Vault a few old skeletons adorn the walls further in; their clothes long since rotted away.

He keeps to the path his mother had given him. And when he reaches the door in the centre, he draws the sword Lorenzo had given him to keep Florence safe, and opens it, ready to face his foe.

But his foe is not there.

The stench of blood engulfs his mind before the sight of it, but there is so much beyond the door that the light seems red with it. Ottoman Turks; the Sultan's men, lie strewn about in pools side by side with black-cloaked figures and others—Sons of Mithras? Or maybe Alfonso's contingent had got here first? There was more than one person who knew the way into the centre of this maze.

That's a Vatican guard, he realises, slumped against a white marble column dyed crimson with the aftermath of whatever had taken place. The room is as vast as the Secret Archives that man had once guarded, and yet even its wide floor is now more red than white.

"Leo..." whispers Silestrana.

He takes one slow step inside the chamber, then another. A bare altar on a raised platform catches his attention, because it looks like until recently there had been something sitting on it. Silestrana flies over the three dozen or so corpses to reach it.

The chaos of the room still transfixes Leonardo though. He stares at the skid marks, spray marks, boot prints and smears all writ in blood and death, all sparkling with the dust of dead daemons, and can't figure out what has happened in this place. Most of the dead had not drawn their swords, fewer still have blood on their weapons.

What the fuck had gone on here?

" _Artista_."

Leonardo could have sworn his heart had stopped.

He recognises the voice immediately, but can't believe he's hearing it. 'I will throw myself on the mercy of the pope', Riario had said, and Leonardo had known well that he'd been going to a very unpleasant fate. Not seeing him by Sixtus' side in Otranto had as much as confirmed for Leonardo that he'd been disposed of, but there had been no one else there who'd have cared to hear him mourn the loss.

Nevertheless, he had mourned the loss. He'd mourned, and he'd been furious, because he'd known Riario well enough to know that he could have been _so beautiful_ if only...

"Are you still looking for the Book of Leaves, da Vinci?" Riario asks him, and laughs. "It isn't here."

Turning around, Leonardo sees his old companion step out from behind one of the pillars, and he feels frightened. Riario is covered head to toe in blood, his black hair has grown out and his beard has been clipped back. He's holding a dagger in his right hand, but it's his eyes that scare Leonardo.

Not the inflammation in the skin around them, though that does concern him. No, it's the look of someone who's dreaming that unnerves him, the way the pupils are tiny black pinpricks against the same green that makes his heart race for Lucrezia, the way there's a total lack of sanity staring back at him, and something else he doesn't realise until Silestrana starts shrieking.

"Velayli!" Leonardo hears her flapping around the room, feels sheer terror from the bottom of her heart. "VELAYLI!?"

Her screams make Riario laugh.

_No,_ Leonardo thinks. _No, it couldn't be..._

And he wants to address Riario, but without thinking it's a different name that passes through his lips.

"Girolamo..." he breathes. Even in this bloodbath the familiarity feels right. "Where's Velayli?"

Riario lets the hand pointing the dagger at him fall with a small laugh, then looks away and laughs more; almost like Vanessa when she's embarrassed with herself for something. So wrong for Riario it's difficult to believe it's him. But he keeps laughing, and when his laughter gets too loud he brings his hand back up to his face so he can laugh into his knuckles.

He's still laughing for what seems like a long time after that, laughing with incredulity like Leonardo is an idiot, and really he is an idiot because he knows what the answer is, Silestrana is already back on his shoulder, on the verge of wailing out her distress, but he just doesn't want it to be real.

Only, Riario answers, and it is real.

"Velayli isn't here either," he whispers, red tears spilling onto his face.

Leonardo turns and throws up into the blood.

 

~*~*~

 

 


	2. Intercision

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As I sat in my chair despairing over the umpteen unfinished WIPs I was failing to write, I somehow came to the decision that the best way to deal with those WIPs was to go back to one of my few finished works and... unfinish it. A BRILLIANT plan!
> 
> Thank you to all who have left comments or kudos, I also cleaned up the first part a little if you wanted to relive those joyous memories. Now, enjoy the horror of intercision!

 

 

 

Getting stuck back in Alfonso's camp is hardly ideal for either of them—particularly as they're now in his command tent on the outskirts of the city rather than in their own space, listening to Alfonso and Lorenzo trade insults and waiting for that moment when the newly anointed Neapolitan king inevitably snaps and goes for one of the swords sticking out of the holsters on his back, or the hyena lunges for the leopard's throat with her fangs.

Then Katte supposes it'll be up to _her_ human to step in and save Leo's patron from getting skewered like a pig.

"How much longer do you think this will go on for?" Lucrezia asks dejectedly.

Zoroaster exhales through almost-closed lips, glancing first at the arguing pair and then at the tent's exit.

"How much longer 'til Leo gets back, or how much longer 'til those two stop measuring their cocks?" he attempts to clarify. "Because Leo will turn up eventually, no doubt about it, but they're another story."

Lucrezia snorts.

Her cuckoo is perched on her shoulder, watching the large carnivores the two present heads of state lug around, fearfully. Katte doesn't blame him for that—she herself wouldn't be much more than a mouthful for either of them and Madrolore is about her size. Also there's the fact that Lorenzo hates him and his human, and while Alfonso owes Leo enough to keep them alive as a favour (and also because it pisses off Lorenzo) he doesn't exactly have any stake in their well-being.

Oh well. At least Lorenzo doesn't hate Katte or Zo.

Alfonso, on the other hand...

"We'll be all right," Zo tells Lucrezia. He means it, and Katte scoffs.

"Oh, we'll be all right, will we?" she asks him. "Leo and his fucking parrot will save us from any possible danger, will he? When he's god knows how many miles away, chasing his phantom book?"

"Shut up, Katte," Zo tells her, rolling his eyes.

She flicks her tail at him.

"I'm just saying," she says. "After all the bullshit we've been through do you really think they'll be any closer to finding their magic book now than they were when we were floating off that cliff from the Vault of Heaven? If the book wasn't there even when all signs pointed to it, why would it be in the Labyrinth?"

"Because Leo's mother said it would be," Zo insists.

"And you really think she's trustworthy, do you?"

"She's Leo's mother."

"And Piero is his father." Katte glances over to the corner where the notary is observing the latest exchange between his employer and his former captor nervously. "Doesn't mean I'd trust him to know his arse from his elbow, let alone the location of a magic book."

Zo sighs.

"Yeah, well. You might be right there. Guess we'll find out."

Katte's human doesn't usually give up on Leonardo quite so quickly, but when it comes to the Book of Leaves there's a sour taste in both their mouths that hasn't gone away since _"You let Riario take Nico and Lontalye?!"_ Whether it's real or not is ultimately beyond the point. It's brought them nothing but trouble—them, and seemingly everyone else who's been searching for it; the Jew, Cosimo de Medici, the Abyssinian—fuck, even Riario who may have deserved every bit of it but surely hadn't done so much that Zita had had to suffer for it too.

How is the fucking book supposed to save Italy if half of Italy dies trying to find it? Lucrezia may think that the deaths that happen have to happen, but Zo doesn't, and Katte is with him on that one. If it had been anyone, _anyone_ other than Leo and Silestrana who'd lead them along this path then never mind them turning their backs without a second thought by now, they'd have been tempted to put a knife in them for emphasis. A small knife maybe, but still.

Of course sometimes the same can be said for Leo, and one of these days Katte swears she's going to pluck Silestrana like a chicken, but despite even that... they can't help but love them.

And then, things take a turn that has even Katte thinking about cutting their losses and leaving those two behind.

"Magnifico!"

A man in Medici livery enters in haste, so much he doesn't even bother to wait for Lorenzo to tell him to come in and practically falls over his own feet once he's inside. He has a squirrel daemon clinging to his shoulder; a weird, grey squirrel with small ears, bigger than your average tree-rat.

"What!?" snaps Lorenzo; angrier than before for being interrupted, but at least the measuring sticks will have to be put away for a few moments.

"A rider approaching camp," says the man. "Spotted by Graziano's falcon daemon. He believes it to be the _artista_ da Vinci."

A wave sweeps over the room; Katte doesn't think she'd be too far off to call it relief.

She and Zo have been worried about the bastard, of course; as have Lucrezia and Madrolore, and if she's not completely losing her mind after spending too many years being best friends with a mad parrot, she might have even said she saw the ghost of a smile on Piero's face.

Lorenzo and his leopard are split across that line though; the one as pleased as the rest of them that his blood-brother is safe, the other only relieved for the sake of their asset, and for that sake even Alfonso seems glad, though the hyena doesn't.

"Does he have the book at last?" asks Lorenzo.

"I do not know, Magnifico," says the messenger. "I was only told it seems he's not alone. Graziano's daemon thought he was carrying an injured man with him on his horse."

Injured man?

Beneath Katte's claws, Zo groans.

"What have you done now, Leo?" he mutters.

Katte never gets the chance to offer a suggestion, though several witty one-liners do spring to mind, because at that moment Silestrana swoops into the tent in a flash of red and yellow, then wordlessly starts flapping about.

That's right.

_Wordlessly._

This _is_ Silestrana they're talking about—Katte would have known her with her eyes plucked out, that's how familiar the two of them are. She'd known she was about to appear a split-second before she'd actually seen her, but you'd have been forgiven for doubting it when you didn't hear her ever-present squawking. Silestrana never shuts the fuck up unless she's decided to let Leo get some of _his_ babbling in there and right now she's flying around the tent mute like she's not even a daemon at all; just some trapped bird.

Alfonso and Lorenzo both duck as soon as she enters, the other humans swerving out of the way on instinct when she gets close, and Lucrezia calls her name but she doesn't answer, nor make a sound at all until she's done another circuit of the space they're in and even then, she only whimpers desperately.

Claws clamping down on Zo's shoulder, Katte feels the heart she shares with Zo begin to sink. Silestrana has been distressed before; rarely like this but it has happened, and for no more reason than an unsolvable problem, a lack of sleep, and a bad mix in the pipe. Here and now, though—that's another story. Here and now she doubts Leo would be taking time off from his mad quest for a touch of opium, and something at the back of her mind, some instinct she has that may not be Silestrana's mammoth brain but works well enough for her, something tells her that this is bad.

That something has gone horribly wrong.

She hadn't honestly expected that stupid fucking book to have been found. But she thinks something much worse than that has happened too.

"Silestrana!" she cries.

The parrot moans again, halting briefly on a table covered with a map before she resumes her panicked flying.

"Fix this," she mutters. "Need to fix this. Need..."

"What's happened, bird-brain!?" snaps Lorenzo's leopard.

Silestrana doesn't answer her. She just keeps babbling.

"Do something. Has to be something... um... we have to. We must—what do we need? What do we do? Just... just let me think!"

"Well?" Alfonso exclaims, scathingly ignoring her request and being very brazen in addressing her directly. "Did you find that damned book or not!?"

"No, no—no book, it was already gone. But he might—"

She cuts herself off, stopped on the back of a chair and hopping around like she can't decide which way to face. The sinking in Katte's heart is becoming pronounced fear.

"He?" Lucrezia prompts. "You mean Leonardo? Is he all right?"

There's a moment where the parrot is completely still; she cocks her head towards Lucrezia then turns it to the ground.

"We'll need a tent," she says, same frantic tone of voice as before but at least with purpose now. "We need a tent, but no one can go in there except us." She hops forwards. "Promise us—Magnifico, no one can go in except us—no one can see!"

Lorenzo is surprised at being addressed directly, though it's not as inappropriate given he and Silestrana's human are brothers of a sort. Not brothers who'd grown up together, of course, so he'd not be at all used to having Silestrana talk to him, especially not in public, but all the same.

He hesitates, then turns slowly to the messenger and tells him, "See that a tent is prepared for Signore da Vinci on the outskirts of the camp."

"It will need a bed," adds Silestrana hastily.

The messenger looks to Lorenzo and he gives his assent.

And by this point, Katte has had enough. She jumps off Zo's shoulder, down his thigh and hops up the table and onto the chair next to the parrot daemon.

"What's going on?" she demands. "Is Leonardo hurt?" Two days ago the bird was laughing at the thought of leaving her with Niofera. Two days ago she'd been the one comforting Katte. Just then a horrible thought strikes her. "How far away from him are you right now?!"

Silestrana stills, and then to Katte's amazement and frankly further fear, she laughs.

"How far away am I?" she asks. "How far? Oh, Katte. Not too far at all, Katte—not too far at all. God... how far away is _she_ right now?"

Katte is taken aback, but she recovers.

"She who?"

There's silence for a few seconds. The room cries with anticipation. Then Silestrana looks abruptly towards the exit.

"Oh no," she says. "No, you can't know. Trust me, you don't want to know. But we can fix this. Somehow, there has to be a way... we can..."

'We can fix this' she keeps saying, and Zo remembers, and pointedly, that she's speaking in the same tone Leo had spoken in months ago. _I will make this right._

He'd kept saying it, as though enough calculations on his part could bring Andrea and Dialanya back from the dead.

God, what's happened now?

Whatever it is, she won't find out for a while, because Silestrana bobs her head back and forth, cocks it sideways, then takes flight again, streaking directly out the exit in an instant. Katte doesn't think she's ever seen her fly so fast.

"What the fuck was that about?" Zo whispers.

Now that she's gone, and left them with nothing, it's almost like she'd never been there to begin with.

But before Katte can jump back onto Zo's shoulder where she belongs, Lucrezia wastes no time in grabbing her cloak from the seat she'd been on and throwing it around herself.

"Come on," she says.

Alfonso stops her. "Are you sure that's wise?" he asks. He's snide, but the question is still serious.

Lucrezia stares him right in the eyes. "If Leonardo is in trouble then I don't care what his daemon says, I'm going to go to him and make him tell me what the problem is, and if I can help with it I will, and if I can't I'll find someone who can!"

The King of Naples blinks and lets her go.

"Don't think for a moment you'll be leaving us behind," says Zo.

Katte knows that she'd have followed Silestrana to the tent even if Zo hadn't (which is a stupid thought, given they're the same person, but she's never pretended to be a genius). However, there's still a part of her that wants to hold back and wait for Leo and Silestrana to sort whatever this is out on their own, and she has to admit this feeling doesn't stem from trust.

It stems from fear.

Because something horrible has happened, and she knows it.

In the end Lorenzo, Alfonso and Piero follow along as well, scattering the men about the camp as they approach; Lorenzo and Alfonso's daemons so much larger than most of the songbirds, dogs and rodents people are used to. It's the dead of night, but activity is rampant, and just over the first hill Katte sees the approaching rider directed towards a tent.

She can't see Leo's face from so far away, in this light and with him cloaked; she certainly can't make out the even shadier character in his arms, but she does see Silestrana fly to his shoulder and knows its them. Their pace quickens enough that Piero struggles to keep up.

There are two other things she sees before they reach them, and both send chills down her spine. The first is how every daemon large enough for her to see from where she is shies away as if from a monster when Leonardo's horse passes them. Two dog daemons near the tent they're heading for actually latch on to their humans' tunics and try to drag them away with their teeth as the horse begins to come to a halt.

The second—something she sees in the space of a blink—is Silestrana bending down and nudging her beak against the shadowy figure's head. The head is covered, it's important to keep in mind; this isn't strictly daemon-touching, but it's intimate, and there aren't many people Silestrana would be so intimate with. Katte even remembers how two days ago she was so careful not to brush against Lucrezia's clothed shoulder.

She's pretty sure no one else saw that, or if they did that they thought it an accident caused by the motion of the horse. But she knows Silestrana, and she knows otherwise.

"Leo!" Zo cries.

They reach him just as the horse he's on comes to a halt. The hood of his cloak falls back and reveals his face, and he seems hale enough but there's this terrible _look_ in his eyes that makes Katte want Zo to hug him, and...

And...

And there's something very wrong with the other person he's with. Katte shrinks down against Zo's shoulder and lets her claws dig deeper than she usually would. Zo winces and gives her a look, but says nothing while there's so much else going on.

"Da Vinci, what the hell is going on!?" Lorenzo yells. His leopard suddenly freezes and pulls him back.

"Wait, Lorenzo," she hisses.

"Leonardo?" Lucrezia asks, somehow frowning with wide eyes.

Katte checks with Madrolore and sees him preparing to fly off his human's shoulder; and that's unusual because for a bird daemon he likes to stick close. The hyena is shying away as well—her front legs trembling, if Katte isn't imagining things and Oroe, Piero's badger daemon—has risen on her hind legs with her paw against Piero's shin, as if to hold him back as others are doing.

They all sense it then, whatever 'it' is.

It's not Leo. Apart from the look in his eyes he's fine. Katte can smell blood, but it's not coming from him.

"Is a physician required?" asks Piero, deciding to be useful for once.

Leo looks at him and frowns like the question was spoken in one of the few languages he doesn't understand, and then for the first time he actually notices that they're all there.

"What?" he says, sounding not at all the genius he supposedly is. "What—no, what are you—why are you all—" he pauses. "You need to leave, you can't be here."

"I beg your pardon!?" barks Alfonso, and he makes to move forward but a strangled sound from his daemon holds him back. Nevertheless, he continues with less than a second's hesitation. "Have you forgotten whose fucking camp this is, da Vinci? That tent's my property; you can't stop me from going in it if I want, and you'll be damned lucky if I don't remove your insolent tongue for flapping it in my face like that!"

"No one will be—"

Lorenzo starts but doesn't finish, because he's interrupted by a soft but unmistakable giggle from the man in Leo's arms.

"... the patron saint of archers..." the man mutters, and giggles again.

Katte knows that voice. Better than she'd have ever wanted to. But she doesn't make the connection at that moment because she's used to recognising people daemon-first, and she hasn't yet—

"Shh," Leo hushes the man, running his hand over the hood of the cloak but not drawing it back just yet.

Everyone in the vicinity is creeped out by now, Katte can tell. No one is even bothering to ask about the stupid book.

And Alfonso... Alfonso looks like he's just been shot.

"Don't come any closer," Leo tells them. "Just don't. Please."

He gets off the horse so that it's standing between him and the rest of them when his feet touch the ground. It's an awkward move, but he manages to heave the (injured?) man into his arms without dropping him, the hood slipping just enough to reveal black hair on a head facing away from them when Leo shifts so that it falls back and hurries into the tent.

Every daemon there wants to follow Leo's orders, and they don't know why.

None of the humans will stand for it. And the daemons are curious enough as to why they are so horrified that there won't be any arguments when they all follow Leo and Silestrana and their shadow inside. Though Lorenzo waves the surrounding men away.

And the hyena daemon sits there, whispering, "No... no..."

Alfonso gives her a strange look, but he's the first to make a move for the inside of the tent. Zo and Lucrezia follow fast on his heels, the other two (four) behind.

They're just in time to see the hood fall back from the stranger's face when Leo lays him gently on the bed within.

Unfortunately, he's not really a stranger.

"Riario!?"

Lucrezia might very well have spat the name out if she hadn't been so shocked. On one level, Katte isn't. She's been waiting for that snake to turn up again, and what do you know? Just when Leonardo was supposedly about to find the Book of Leaves, he instead comes back with this fuck. Typical.

Now _he_ looks the worse for wear. Eyes so red they're more than bloodshot, they look almost like they've been burned. He's noticeably thinner, paler, than last they saw him and to be honest he hadn't been looking his best then. But it is him. Him and his fucking creepy—

And his—

And—

And then she realises. Her breath catches in her throat.

"Zo," she says, as if he'd know the answer somehow. "Where's that creepy cat?"

"What?"

He frowns at her. Doesn't he _see_?

"Where's the cat?" she asks again. The cat that moves as quiet as poison in a well; she turns up in the most unexpected places and she's free-wandering, so maybe she's just out of sight—only they'd have had to have been carrying her for her to keep up with a horse, surely?

"Please leave," says Leo. "Please, I need to think—I can't... I need to..."

"Velayli," mutters Alfonso. Distantly, Katte remembers a lifetime ago when Leo had been impersonating that evil bastard on Alfonso's ship. _'He's my friend'_ , the then-prince had said. She wonders if the cat and the hyena had actually liked each other.

You didn't tend to think of shits like them as having friends, even each other, but it was possible he genuinely cared, and if that was the case...

Christ, what the hell is she thinking? She knows what she's looking at. By the grace of a God she's always frankly been unsure of, she's never seen this before, but she knows.

She knows, as well as she knows Silestrana.

That cat is _gone_.

"Where the fuck? Where the fuck?"

"I can think of something to make this right if I could only—"

Alfonso and Leonardo start speaking at the same time, talking over each other until Alfonso grabs a dazed Leonardo by his shirt collar, pulls him close and drowns his mumbling out by roaring—

" _Where the fuck's Velayli!? Where the fuck is she!? Where the fuck!? What the fuck have you done!?"_

"Alfonso!"

Lorenzo looks like the only one among them capable of doing more than standing there shocked, though the same can't be said for his daemon. He takes Alfonso by the shoulders and pulls him back from Leo firmly.

"Let him speak," he orders. "Piero, close the tent flap."

Piero manages to follow that command, but once it's done he goes back to staring in horror, his face growing paler by the second. And it's easier to look at a snivelling weasel like Piero than at what's on the bed.

Easier to breathe.

Katte's not the only one having difficultly; Leo looks exhausted, is breathing heavily after Alfonso's assault, looking at the floor. He struggles to find words for what seems like minutes, head shaking back and forth, and yet it seems far too soon when he does speak.

"I don't know what happened," he says. It's that awful voice he uses when he's lost. "We didn't see him in Otranto and I thought Sixtus had killed him for disobeying his order to secure Florence. He said he was going to go back, even though he knew..."

He trails off, and takes a deep breath before he starts again, not taking his eyes off Riario for a moment.

"When I got to the centre of the Labyrinth he was there, everyone else was dead, the book was gone and so was Velayli. I tried to... tried to ask him what had happened, but he's not... he's not coherent. All I could make out was that it was the Enemies of Man that did this to him. I don't know why. I just don't know. He must have been their captive for some time."

"That fucking cult of yours?!" yells Alfonso. "Sixtus told me _you'd_ probably killed him in your fucking new world!"

Leo just shakes his head.

_No, anyone on the ship we stole from you could have told you; he was fine when we left him at Pisa. Well, he was alive anyway_ —is what she wants Zo to say, but he doesn't. He's transfixed by what's before his eyes, not really understanding yet the full gravity, not having any basis for comparison for this living nightmare outside a scary story or two, and what he sees she can't help but look at.

In a way, the bastard doesn't really look like himself anymore. It's more than the obvious physical changes, those just make him 'Riario with red eyes and less meat on the bones'. It's like he's not the man who tried to kill them so many times, who stole Nico and did... they still don't understand exactly what he did, but they'll never forgive him for it—who lives for the oppression of innocent people beneath the rule of Rome. Not him at all.

Just a shell.

He lies almost completely still, head turned towards the edge of the tent. Only his eyes are moving, rapidly, in all directions.

" _Did you spend much time with Miss Pussy, then?_ " Kerrickatte remembers asking Lontalye, watching those yellow-green eyes watching them from the other side of their dark cell. " _She teach you how to chase down birds? You might tell her Silestrana's a little out of her league in that regard_."

She'd hoped so anyway, when she'd said it. She'd feared they might have been more of an even match than that.

_"Velayli?"_ Lontalye had replied _. "Oh, she's really nice."_

_"You've got to be fucking kidding me."_

_"I'm serious. She doesn't say much; I don't think she said a word to me at all while we were on the Basilisk, but when we did reach land she... helped me. Us. Riario was always proposing these fucked up scenarios and asking what we'd do in that situation, but she... she encourages us."_

_"You think she's where he keeps his conscience then? Maybe we should hope she starts speaking up more often. Hah. Still, I suppose I'd hate to see him without her."_

The irony.

Jesus fucking Christ.

"Leo..." Zo starts but doesn't know how to finish. It's more of a request than anything, a desperate plea for guidance even though it sounds soft.

And Leo says again—

"There has to be some way I can fix this. If there's a machine that can cut the bond between a man and a daemon then there has to be some way to repair that bond—maybe if we find the Book the knowledge contained within—"

He's interrupted as Lucrezia is noisily sick in a corner. She probably hates Riario more than anyone, so that's telling. More so than the nonsense Leo is babbling. And Silestrana likewise, when she joins in.

"Maybe if we could find Velayli," she's musing, sounding as desperate as Katte's ever heard her and yet different, like she's on the verge of crying rather than screaming. "She must still be with the Enemies of Man, if she was dead then Girolamo wouldn't have ever regained consciousness."

"Da Vinci..." Lorenzo says. He still seems the most composed of all of them with Piero shaking in his boots and Alfonso digging his fingers into his scalp, but his hand is tight on his leopard's head and she's making sounds like she's about to be as sick as Lucrezia. "We can't leave him like this. There's nothing we can do but put an end to it. If Rome finds out we have him, and they will,—"

"I won't have it!" Leo shouts at him. He gets in between his patron and his nemesis, bizarrely protecting the latter from the former and Katte doesn't even think to question Leo's protective instinct for Riario of all people because yeah. He's suffered enough now.

And sure, she and Zo have always ached to see him get his proper comeuppance. A blade through the guts and a few hours left in a ditch before he finally expires always seemed appropriate. Not this. This isn't comeuppance. This is _obscene_.

Is it really fair to force him to linger like this, alone? Even a man such as this? She supposes he still deserves the title of a 'man' despite it all. Otherwise what can they call the _Enemies_ of Man?

Although, without a daemon...

"You can't just leave him like this, boy," Piero protests, looking at the figure on the bed like it's already a mutilated corpse. "It would be a mercy."

"Because you know so much about mercy!" spits Leo, standing even closer to the bed. He shuts his eyes and takes a deep breath thereafter. "He might have vital information about the workings of the Enemies of Man," he says; a different tactic. "And surely none of you think they can be allowed to continue _plaguing_ the world. Not after this."

It's not a sentence that invites disagreement.

Lorenzo looks like he's going to protest again, argue that the complications involved in keeping a man who has been—Katte almost can't bring herself to think the word, let alone say it— _severed_ , are too great for a fool's hope he might prove useful some other way. But Alfonso cuts him off.

"Not on your miserable life," he snarls at the premier of Florence. "And I wouldn't let any of you kill him like this anyway. With Velayli so far away from him there's no telling what might happen to his eternal soul."

Was there scripture about separation that said something along those lines, or was that just wild speculation? Either way it's always surprising to hear Alfonso suddenly invoking religion given what a bloodthirsty maniac he is. Not that Katte or Zo have much room to be surprised when Leo's brought a victim of _Severence_ to their doorstep. Next thing you know the Impaler and his monster will show up again with an army of familiars at his back to kill them all, though at least Riario would be put out of his misery, she supposes.

Right at that moment, Riario laughs a little on the bed, and Katte buries her face in Zo's hair to try and block it out. It's just...

There are no words. There really aren't.

Leo turns and kneels over Riario, hand on his hair. It should be infuriating, to see him treat a man they hate so much as if he's precious to them, but it isn't, because it's not really Riario anymore. Katte doesn't know what he is anymore.

"We can find Velayli," Leo says. He's speaking more to what was Riario, than to Alfonso. "We can find Velayli and bring her back, but we need your help, Girolamo. Do you know where they were keeping you?"

A short, empty silence follows. Katte shrinks back when Riario reaches up tentatively towards Leo's face, and Zo almost mirrors him as he lifts his hand to stroke Katte's back comfortingly.

"Nowhere," Riario answers.

What happens next is almost too quick for Katte to comprehend. Silestrana calls out, 'Leo!', and Leo brings his hands to Riario's wrists, lightning-fast. Riario himself had just been about to move them, and at the same time he launches himself up from the bed with a hiss like the cat that's been taken from him, prompting Leo to swing one leg over his hips and straddle him fully, pinning him down to the bed.

All this takes a second at the most. And before his head falls back against the mattress he begins to chant.

"We are the horns of the increate, we are the shadows at the centre of the labyrinth, but we are men, not gods—we live in flesh and blood and bone. How many of us occupy this chamber? We are the horns of the increate, we are the shadows at the centre of the labyrinth—"

He struggles like an animal in a trap with every word, spitting them out like some parody of prayer, and through her horror Katte can still tell from the calm in Leo's face and demeanour that this isn't the first time he's seen Riario do this.

Riario is still ranting quietly when Leo turns his head back to the shocked onlookers.

"We may need to restrain him," he admits.

Katte doesn't know what to think. Zo doesn't know what to say.

_"I suppose I'd hate to see him without her,"_ she'd said, oh so long ago now.

If she could only go back there and punch herself in the face for tempting fate.

 

 

 II.

Madrolore remembers his first encounter with Velayli with consummate accuracy. It had been a difficult encounter to forget.

When Francesco had told them to get Amelia and Enoch out of danger—those scant few seconds they'd had before the noose had closed around all their necks—Madrolore had flown off Lucrezia's shoulder to scout ahead, through the open door and down the passageway, and he hadn't made it more than a metre before she'd pounced on him.

It's not often your first contact with another daemon is through touch. Sight, sound, smell—though as a bird Madrolore's much better with the former two, and sight especially is how one normally makes their judgement. Touch, when you don't explicitly allow it, is an attack even if not intended that way, and Velayli isn't the sort of daemon to pave roads with good intentions so much as with bloodied corpses.

Hadn't been.

That had been the first and only time she'd had her claws on him—she didn't like to be too close to people or daemons as a rule, and he thinks he understands why. But the day he'd suddenly found himself slammed against the dusty floor, able to turn his head just far enough to see her long whiskers trailing out of her cheeks, he'd had more of a glimpse of her than he thinks she realised; her, and what made her.

_Resignation_. He's now come to understand that all too well as well.

So much smaller then, as a nightingale, he'd heard Lucrezia cry out and fall back against the doorway, felt her nails scraping against the frame as Amelia's fingers had tightened in her other arm, and hadn't even considered mounting a struggle. And even then, he'd begun to feel there was something not quite right about the form he was in—like he'd made a terrible mistake in settling the way he'd been for almost seven years at that point.

Not that the form he's in now is much more intimidating. But it is more appropriate. That's what Velayli had said to him when he'd found himself standing in his brother's golden dust, unheard by Lucrezia as she'd sobbed.

" _Much more appropriate. If you_ want _to stay alive_."

She'd given them a wide berth as she'd passed, whispered just loud enough for Madrolore to hear, and there have been nights he's dreamed he had attacked her then, realised that one opportunity to show defiance as Lucrezia had when she'd spat in Riario's face. It had been something about the emphasis she'd put on the word 'want' that had stayed him, something he hadn't understood at the time.

He thinks he does now, as he twists his head to hold strands of Lucrezia's hair in his beak so she can eject the contents of her stomach on the grass floor of the tent they're in without her hair getting in the way.

"Someone find him some clean clothes," Leonardo mutters. He's done so just as Piero is making his way out of the tent, and the badger seems to have heard him. They're following Lorenzo, who'd chosen to take Alfonso storming out as an opportunity that leaves only Zoroaster and Lucrezia in the tent with Leonardo and Riario, and their daemons. Those of them that had them. "I'm pretty sure there aren't any serious wound... physical wounds, but I couldn't perform more than a cursory examination in the circumstances we were in." He pauses. "I think you should go outside, Lucrezia."

Lucrezia doesn't want to go outside. She shakes her head.

"No, it's passed," she says. "A little water and I'll be fine."

Leonardo grimaces, and there's a look on his face that lets them know he's not quite certain why they'd want to stay, and a look beneath that that tells them that for some reason he doesn't want them to. Madrolore has a feeling he knows why, but he doesn't think Lucrezia has seen it yet; still too shocked at what's before them to worry that there's genuine affection in da Vinci's ministrations to Riario. Riario, who is still repeating those same words, over and over.

"...are the horns of the increate, we are the shadows at the centre of the labyrinth, but we are men not gods—we live in flesh and blood and bone. How many of us occupy this chamber? We are the horns of the increate, we are the shadows at the centre of the labyrinth, we are men not gods—we live in flesh and blood and bone. How many of us occupy this chamber?"

It strikes a chord in Madrolore. Another memory, this time more recent.

" _Where are you from? Who sent you here? What is your name?_ "

"I think the words he keeps repeating are words the Labyrinth used against him when they had him," Leonardo mutters. "But why would they keep asking how many people were in the room... ?"

"Leo," Zoroaster chokes out. He's been uncharacteristically quiet since they entered the tent, and a quick glance sees Kerrickatte with her face buried against his head, claws wrapped around locks of his hair like she's clinging on for dear life. "What... what happened in there?"

"... normally a person who's been severed can't perform complex tasks or speak coherent sentences. They must actually have a _Machina Intercisione_ , and the knowledge to keep a person functional following separation..."

"Leo... do the Enemies of Man have the Book of Leaves?"

That's something Madrolore hadn't considered. It's a fearsome thought.

And Leonardo's hesitation does not inspire confidence.

"I don't know," he says eventually. "There were a lot of dead bodies when I got to the centre. A _lot_ of dead bodies, and some of them looked like they'd been part of the Labyrinth. I think Riario killed at least some of them. I'm not sure they were expecting him to."

Abruptly, Riario's mantra stops. The other three all look at him expectantly, Madrolore and Silestrana likewise.

"You'll never find it," he says, soft as down. "Never. It doesn't want to be found."

"Girolamo..."

Riario laughs again, looks up at Leonardo and cocks his head.

There. That look that passes between them. Now the thought does occur to Lucrezia even as it solidifies in Madrolore's mind.

Genuine affection.

But before either of them can decide what to think about that, Riario's head turns again, and this time towards them instead.

They both shrink back. The only person who scares them more in the entire world is the imposter, and sometimes not even him, because they've learned how to predict him by now whereas there's always been an element to Riario that they just can't quite calculate for. His vicious streak, the look in his eyes when he's hurting her that they can't bring themselves to see as 'human'; that's not entirely gone from his eyes now.

He squints like he doesn't recognise them at first. Perhaps he doesn't, with half himself missing. His face loses all trace of smile.

"Cousin."

Lucrezia doesn't know how to answer to that. Both Leonardo and Zoroaster look worried, but she just stands there and Madrolore tightens the grip he has on her shoulder.

"Cousin," he says again. "... there was something I thought I should tell you."

Beneath Madrolore's feet Lucrezia's shoulders rise and fall with the heaviness of her breathing.

"What was that?" she asks. She even makes the effort to sound casual, futile though it is.

Riario looks up at the ceiling of the tent.

"I thought I should say that I..." he looks her in the eyes again. "... am sorry."

Madrolore blinks.

He can't mean that. He can't—

He continues.

"...for what I said to you... on the _Basilisk_."

The memory is clear as day; him circling around his human, desperately searching for some way to help her out of the chains he could feel around her body like they were holding his own wings against himself. Velayli had sat on the side of the ship nonchalantly, her attention fixed on the boy, Nico, and his dog daemon except for that one instant when Riario had said what Madrolore knows right now is what he's referring to.

" _I would have spared... if I could_."

Just in case they hadn't realised though, Riario clarifies for them with that smirk beginning to tug at his lips again.

"... that I would have spared Amelia, if I could. It was a stupid thing to say."

Because there had been a dozen things he could have done to save them when it had actually counted? Because it made no difference then when she was dead and rotting in her grave, and had been for years? Because it had to have been a lie, and he couldn't have believed that Lucrezia would have thought otherwise?

"Because, of the three of us," Riario says, as if he's heard Madrolore's sardonic mental commentary, "she was really the only one who _was_ spared."

He pauses. The room is silent.

"Does that help?" he asks them.

Help?

Does it _help_?

Lucrezia's jaw falls open.

"No," she tells him, incredulous. "No, how could it?!"

_It's true, though_ , a voice whispers from the bottom of their heart. _You and your cousin are two of a kind, killers of innocent men and women and their daemons—Becchi, Giuliano, those poor nuns; they're not the only ones and neither Amelia nor Enoch will never have to know that_.

Riario laughs; again, like he can hear their thoughts.

"That's what I thought," he tells them. "I shouldn't have said anything. She'll never see her family again now."

What was it, Madrolore wonders, that he shouldn't have said? That Amelia had been the only one of them to be spared or did he mean further back, when he'd tried to convince the imposter to spare their lives—succeeded, in his and Lucrezia's case, though he'd never thought for a moment that that snake had had any purpose in mind other than the one he'd spoken of to Alessandro.

As for Amelia never seeing her family again, well. Maybe she and Enoch wouldn't have wanted to if she'd known what their sibling would become. What their human father and daemon mother truly were.

Maybe he and Lucrezia, and Francesco, Jetariel, Alessandro, Trelantro, Riario and Velayli will all end up in Hell together, and having to spend eternity with that assortment is Hell all on its own as far as Madrolore's concerned. Though according to legend Riario and Velayli will wander Earth for all eternity instead, searching for each other and never finding.

Which, he wonders, is a worse fate?

"Girolamo," Leonardo addresses him softly, "I know it must be difficult to think right now, but we have to know. Does the Labyrinth have the Book?"

There's a pause. Then—

"The Book will never be found. Never. Never. How many people occupy this chamber? Four. Eight. Stop asking me. _Stop asking us_! _Don't touch her_!"

Suddenly Riario stills and lifts his head up, looking at the entrance to the tent.

"What is it?" Leonardo asks him.

Riario blinks rapidly, looking even more dazed than before.

"He's here," he announces.

"Who's here?"

No answer.

"Girolamo?"

Still no answer. Riario has closed his eyes and gone quiet, as if asleep. As if dead, without Velayli, and Madrolore does keep coming back to that, but he simply can't escape it. She's gone. She's gone and her human is still here—and it's so _wrong_.

"Signore da Vinci?!"

The same Medici servant who'd alerted them to da Vinci's return calls for them from the other side of the tent flap, and Madrolore almost winces as Leonardo crouches instinctively over Riario as soon as they hear the sound.

"What is it?" Leonardo calls back.

"Signore, his Magnificence asked me to inform you that his Holiness the one true Pope has arrived in the camp!"

Zoroaster looks towards Leonardo.

"And do we have a fucking clue which pope that would be?"

"Her father," Leonardo confirms, nodding towards Lucrezia and meeting Madrolore's eyes for a fraction of a second. "Lorenzo and I worked it out so 'holiness' means her father and 'eminence' means his." He gestures towards Riario.

It's a shame both descriptors are so inaccurate, thinks Madrolore.

Lucrezia isn't as ready as he is to give up on her father. Madrolore understands why, of course. If they gave up on him they would only have Leonardo, and how could Leonardo love them if they'd done what they'd done for a proverbial false idol?

But at the same time he remembers hopping dizzily in a cage; a blue and yellow, male Silestrana cocking his head at them from a higher perch while that woman asked the same three questions over, and over, and over.

'The dead are always peaceful', she'd said. Their first impulse had been to say she'd got Francesco and Jetariel's intentions wrong, something Lucrezia still half-believed. By contrast Madrolore was down to much less than half by now.

" _You must have faith_ ," Francesco had told them.

Faith. Why did the words seem so empty?

Did he mean faith in God? Faith in him? How could they have either when things had come to this? Amelia and Enoch dead, he and Lucrezia murderers, an imposter on the papal throne and somehow the answer was to put all of Italy in danger of subjugation by the Ottomans instead of the simple reverse of the deception the imposter had perpetrated.

" _The most obvious move is rarely the right one._ "

That may be, but Madrolore remembers reading from a compendium of Aesop in their youth, and of the story of the Cat and the Fox. How, chased by a pack of hounds; the fox boasted of the dozens of different stratagems he could use to escape the beasts while the cat only had the one. Sure enough, the cat played its one trick and simply climbed a tree, but it ended up safe, while the fox spent so long dithering over its complicated plots that it had no time to implement any of them and was torn to pieces.

Madrolore doesn't think his mother or her human will be torn to pieces because of their distaste for obvious moves, but something tells him they'll only avoid that by throwing other animals to the dogs to keep them busy, and something whispers further that they'll hardly feel a shred of guilt over it.

All that being the case, Lucrezia is still relieved to hear the news.

"If anyone outside the Sons of Mithras know how to deal with something like this, it's my father," she says confidently. Though as her other self, Madrolore knows not all the doubt they feel comes from him alone.

Leonardo can only nod, however. The Bible tells that Christ once restored the bond between a man and his daemon the Romans had severed. Leonardo is the son of a lawyer, not the Almighty, so with that as presumably his only reference point for fixing intercision he's starting from scratch. Any second opinions will be welcome.

"I'll stay here," he says. "You go meet him."

They go, and Zoroaster and Kerrickatte go with them, but as the heavy flap of cloth drops down behind them, obscuring the interior from view, Madrolore catches a glimpse of Silestrana fluttering onto Leonardo's shoulder. Sudden curiosity prompts him to linger further than Lucrezia does, dismounting from her shoulder and catching his talons on the fabric.

It's ungainly, but he does hear this before his bond draws him back to his human:

"We could do it, Leo," Silestrana is whispering. "If Sixtus ends up not knowing what to do, we could at least try. From what Nico said about the shipwreck—"

"That's not something we should decide on a whim," Leonardo hisses back.

That's all Madrolore gets. It unnerves him nonetheless, and when he mentions it to Lucrezia he can tell it unnerves her as well, but she doesn't get the chance to comment on it, because their parent is right in front of them all too soon, already met by Lorenzo and Alfonso.

Francesco's eyes crinkle with fondness when he sees them. It's difficult to see his smile beneath the beard that he's kept for purpose of rudimentary disguise, and yet Madrolore can't think it's anything but genuine joy he shows when he sees them, and Lucrezia's doubts all but disappear at that one look.

"Lucrezia," he greets them; voice still raspy from prolonged use of his pipe.

Jetariel is nowhere to be seen, but Madrolore thinks he senses his mother within a chest that's one of many on a wagon Francesco has brought with him a few yards down the road. He's tempted to fly to her when his human runs to her father's arms, but instead perches on the saddle of the nearest horse.

"Father."

The old man senses her distress immediately.

"My dear daughter," he says. He pulls away far enough to look at her face when he strokes her hair. "What is the matter?"

There are words to describe the matter, of course. It's just a word that's almost too difficult to think about, and so it hurts to say it—severed. Indeed, it's not a word Lucrezia lets past her lips right now.

"You should come quickly, father," she says.

Kalaiola growls, but Lorenzo holds her back for now, and Madrolore can understand their trepidation. They must have no idea how far they can trust the twin of their worst enemy, for despite the saying the enemy of one's enemy is not always one's friend. Florence's continued independence has depended much on that—otherwise Rome, Milan and Venice might have teamed up against them and divided Medici lands amongst themselves accordingly.

So they lead him towards the tent, a servant carrying the chest which has to contain Jetariel just behind Francesco.

_Why don't you carry her out in the open_? Madrolore wonders. _Why do you insist on concealing yourself even now?_

_Didn't you say you'd make us a full partner in your plans?_

Lucrezia gives Madrolore a quick look, his distrust becoming apparent enough through their bond that she feels the need to address it, first with her eyes, then with a few short words.

"Don't say anything just yet," she says.

Madrolore sighs.

The men in the camp move to one side as they approach the tent, Neapolitans and Florentines regarding their pope curiously, and warily. He wonders how much they know about... well, any of this, and hopes for their sakes the answer is 'not much'.

Once the tent is in front of them, Lucrezia only hesitates for a moment because she feels Madrolore's immediate reluctance to go back in. She's human, so she doesn't feel it for herself—the unnatural existence inside that place. Had only felt the relief of not having to look at the dreadful sight when they'd left, which is still partially leftover dread from the last time they saw Riario, not the ache of the nothingness that surrounds him still when they re-enter.

"Your Holiness," greets Leonardo, now standing with his arms folded at the head of the bed. Riario looks like he's sleeping—or dead, if not for the rise and fall of his chest.

"Da Vinci."

Francesco takes one look at his nephew, tilts his head, then turns to open the chest. Jetariel hops out onto his arm, ruffling her feathers with annoyance.

Madrolore waits for their _real_ reaction, for this cannot be it.

"I'd have thought you might conceive of a better way to transport me; given our twin had me shut up in such a small space for so many years," she grumbles.

Holding an arm out for the owl to fly to, Francesco returns his gaze to the bed.

"Look, Jetta," he murmurs. "It seems poor Velayli has been absconded with."

His voice is light and all but amused. Madrolore feels bile rise in Lucrezia's throat.

"What of it?" his mother replies, dismissively. "It's not as if she improved him any, and it's better than he deserves."

An hour ago Madrolore and Lucrezia might have said the same, but for them to do so would have been merely that—just words. Doesn't Jetariel _see_ what is right before her eyes? What isn't? Can't she feel in every grain of dust that makes her how wrong this is?

He knows how she has suffered, of course; her imprisonment, impersonation and the loss of her younger son, but her verdict still seems overly brutal to him. To Leonardo, it can't be ignored.

It's a rare thing to hear Leonardo splutter; baffled as anyone talking to him usually is. The pronouncement seems to shock him so badly that Silestrana has to voice his outrage for him.

"Fuck you!" she cries. "You take that back! You take that back right now, damn it!"

And with noticeably less eloquence than Madrolore expects from her.

"Forgive Jetariel, da Vinci," Francesco says hoarsely. "I understand that to see anyone in this state can be upsetting. Even the lowest of the low shares a sacred bond with their daemon, which God forbids the breaking of in all circumstances."

"Well, much as I never thought I'd say it, Girolamo is hardly the lowest of the low," Leonardo retorts.

Francesco's eyebrows shoot up.

"I didn't realise you had become so familiar with him," he says. He sounds almost amused again, and something darker than that.

"We were forced to rely on each other in the New World," Leonardo says. It's clearly all he's going to say on the subject, but then again perhaps it's all he needs to.

However, Jetariel is not impressed.

"Whatever happened there, child, it's in the past," she tells him.

"I've heard it said time is a river," he replies.

This elicits a chuckle from Francesco, which in turn strikes a cold feeling all the way to the tips of Madrolore's feathers.

He's beginning to think Francesco and Jetariel are entirely unaffected by what's before them.

Truly, even _pleased._

"—and if I could hazard a guess," Leonardo continues, "I'd say it looks like you've seen intercision before."

That could explain it, Madrolore hopes. He feels Lucrezia latch on to the explanation as well.

"Indeed I have, da Vinci. Indeed I have. It is not quite as taboo in some cultures I have had the chance to observe as those of us who follow the God of Abraham. A ghastly sight to behold."

... does that mean he's seen the process _done_ before, as well as seen its consequences? Because Madrolore doesn't even want to try to imagine what the _process_ is like. He digs his little talons harder into his human's shoulder.

Leonardo takes a deep breath.

"Well," he asks, "did you see anything that could help us with him now? I mean, you hate him and I understand that, you have every right to—but we need him to be lucid right now. He may be our only chance to bring down the Enemies of Man."

"Then you will have to miss that chance," Francesco tells him calmly, "for I will make no effort to benefit his condition."

There's a short silence. Leonardo freezes, and then his eyes narrow.

"I'm sorry, you _do_ have some idea of how to help him?"

"Yes."

"But you won't," Leonardo says, disbelief evident. "Even to stop the Labyrinth?"

"Da Vinci, I have no interest in stopping the Labyrinth."

Complete silence descends, apart from the tiniest rustling noise Leonardo makes when he steps closer to the bed, between Riario and Francesco. Madrolore isn't sure he's aware he's doing it; with his eyes looking like they'll explode out of their sockets any second now it's hard to imagine he's thinking at all, and that's such a strange thought considering it's Leonardo that it occurs to him even though he himself is having difficulty accepting what Francesco has just said.

Eventually, Leonardo asks him—

"I'm sorry, what?"

And Francesco sighs.

"The Enemies of Man, contrary to what the Sons of Mithras might have told you, are seeking the book in order to destroy it, not to use its knowledge. True, they may take it upon themselves to use what it contains temporarily in order to destroy the Sons of Mithras or stop the progress of invention by other means; but it would be a temporary setback, and the Book of Leaves is not required to save these lands."

"We've managed without it for a few thousand years," says Jetariel. There's no trace of the kindness Francesco presents in her huge, yellow eyes. "We'll manage without it now."

Leonardo stares.

"They're performing _intercisions_!"

"On a mere fraction of their members, many of whom we understand receive it willingly to prove their devotion. Can you be sure Riario did not ask for this?"

Furiously, Leonardo leans down and picks up Riario's arm, then yanks the sleeve down past his elbow.

"I hardly think this speaks to someone who was acting under their own will!" he hisses.

There's a long scar across the centre of Riario's forearm, a newly healed one just beneath his wrist, and Madrolore can only think of one explanation for it. It's chilling, but then, it's not as if there haven't been times such thoughts have crossed Lucrezia's mind.

He wonders what Velayli must have thought of it, and quickly concludes she'd have accepted it long before she'd have accepted intercision. She's a strange one, mind you. She might have even been the one to propose the idea.

"You don't know the story behind that cut, da Vinci," Francesco tells him—and dear God, he's _smiling_. "It may not mean what you think it does."

"You can't be serious."

"Father..." Lucrezia says, finally finding her voice. "We've wanted him to suffer too... but not like this. Amelia wouldn't have wanted this... and neither would Enoch."

That is certainly true; they hadn't had a cruel bone in either of their bodies—no lone kernel of malevolence in even the deepest recesses of their soul.

Apparently, this does nothing to dissuade Francesco, and the look Jetariel gives them is quite bitter.

"It is said that one man's soul is worth a thousand lives," Francesco says. "If so, then the soul they speak of is certainly not Velayli, who was not worth _one_. She was damned long before she stood back and watched my daughter die. Whatever has happened to her is merely a warming to what awaits her in the fires of Hell."

Silestrana is making a strange sound Madrolore guesses is indicative of mounting aggression. While his own heart sinks, hers is filling with fire he can almost see a glint of in Leonardo's eyes.

"Don't!"

The cry comes, suddenly, from Riario, who shoots up on the bed and makes for the dagger at Leonardo's side a split-second too slowly for Leonardo to be caught out. He jerks his hips around and swoops down to catch Riario's wrists again and hold them.

Riario leans in and like a viper he strikes with his teeth, clamping down on Leonardo's shoulder.

Leonardo is wearing a brown leather jacket, so there is some protection, but he still freezes and gasps painfully.

"Ah-ah-ah!"

Lucrezia rushes forward and grabs Riario's head, but he's latched on tight, and Leonardo winces and grits his teeth. She doesn't want to hurt him by pulling Riario away, nor—to be honest—risk that Riario will then turn towards their own vulnerable flesh, and she pulls gently but digs her fingers into his scalp hard to keep a firm grip on him and try to induce him to release Leonardo, who keeps his flailing hands from clawing at them both.

"Let go, Girolamo," he says. "Come on, let go. You're safe here. You're safe, I promise you."

"Hold your breath, my darling."

Madrolore flutters up quickly at the sound of a new voice among their number, sees Francesco and Jetariel turn their heads, and then sees her.

_What the hell is_ she _doing here?!_

"Mother!?" Leonardo gasps—half in surprise, half in pain.

Silent as a shadow, the woman who once spent close to three days asking Lucrezia the same three questions over and over again has entered the tent, clothed in darkness and spilling the contents of a small bottle onto a cloth.

There isn't much time for a reaction. Leonardo breathes in and cranes his neck as far away from Riario as he can when his mother puts one hand over one of Lucrezia's—who snatches both away at once—and holds the cloth beneath Riario's nose.

A few moments later, he stops struggling.

Leonardo exhales, and leans the body in his arms back gently on to the bed. Then, quite without consideration so it seems, he follows him down and kisses his forehead affectionately.

_We were forced to rely on each other in the New World_ , rings hollowly in Madrolore's head. He turns to Silestrana for some comment, but her attention is also focussed on Riario, until Francesco speaks.

"Caterina."

The woman stands to her full height slowly, turns to Francesco even slower, and curtseys.

"Your Holiness," she greets him.

One could not have mistaken her tone for holding any smidgeon of respect.

"You two know each other?" Leonardo asks incredulously.

"Better, I think," replies Francesco, "than your mother would like. But we have met."

That's less surprising than it really should be. Maybe at this point nothing surprises them anymore; Lucrezia's gaze is still focussed on the hand Leonardo has threaded into Riario's hair.

Neither of them can deny it, nor bring themselves to speak it.

Genuine affection.

The hand Caterina places right that moment on Lucrezia's arm is the only thing that stops her from crying _'why!_?' at the top of her lungs.

"You should not be here for what is to follow, Signora," she tells her.

Her words engender something of a conflict in them because Lucrezia doesn't want to leave and Madrolore doesn't want to see the man they love most in the world caressing one of their sibling's murderers. The woman has a way of saying things that brokers no argument, but Lucrezia is so reluctant that Leonardo catches their eyes and motions his head towards the exit.

It _hurts_. To be summarily _dismissed_ like that.

And it's not the first time he's hurt them like that.

But it is the first time they feel like they don't deserve it.

"Go on, my dear," says Jetariel. "I have a feeling Caterina speaks the truth."

Caterina glares at the owl, but says nothing. It occurs to Madrolore that Borophoros, Caterina's daemon, is not there either. She and the parrot are able to separate across ludicrously long distances, they know this, but being in her presence it seems both natural and unnatural, and it's something else Madrolore would rather be away from.

Eventually, with all three of the tent's other occupants (not counting Riario; only half a person now) in agreement that she should leave; knowing how dangerous each of them is, Lucrezia nods, gathers her skirts with all the dignity she can muster and leaves the tent. And although it proves difficult, she does not look back.

Outside the air is cold; possibly it will snow tonight. Lucrezia breathes deeply and lets the cold numb her.

_We were trying to be braver than this_ , she thinks.

_We must not confuse bravery for foolishness,_ Madrolore tells her, through a painless nip of her earlobe. _Whatever is about to happen in there... I have a feeling we truly don't want to see it._

The image of Leonardo's affection for their cousin lingers in their mind, and the worst part is they can't feel angry at Riario anymore. He's been destroyed already, in a way even they had never wished for him—unlike Jetariel, whose pleasure at the sight is something else that lingers in their mind, far from where it is wanted.

With no one else to turn to, they find themselves standing in front of Zoroaster and Kerrickatte, and though it seems petty—given the circumstances—Madrolore finds his other half voicing their dark thoughts.

"What really happened between Leonardo and Riario while you were away?"

Zoroaster winces. There's a reflection of their own incredulity in his face that provides them some small comfort.

"I don't even know," he tells her. "They were both so desperate to find the Book of Leaves, it was like Leo completely forgot everything that bastard had done to us. And then when they were back on the ship Riario was injured and Leo was fixing him, and they were talking about God knows what and going quiet every time someone else came into the room." He sighs. "I don't know what Leo was thinking. It's almost like he has a thing for dangerous people. No offence."

They can't take any when everyone knows it's true. Besides, they're still struggling with the other thing.

"He can't..." Lucrezia whispers. "He must know what that man has done. He killed my sister, how can Leonardo _care_ for him!?"

There's a laugh behind them, long, bitter and familiar.

Lorenzo.

He's laughing, but Kalaiola is not.

"Oh, indeed!" he almost yells, eyes narrowed to the point of tears. "That's our da Vinci. I know exactly how you feel, Signora, the man seems to have _unbridled_ affection for the woman who killed my brother!"

It clicks then, for Madrolore, in a way it hadn't before. Perhaps for Lucrezia too, the ripples from that click shake him too much to check they're in agreement for now.

For years—literal years, he's been trying to stop Lucrezia from telling herself _'you're just like him, you're just like him'_ every time she performs some duplicitous act. Even when he thinks it too.

(When Becchi's hare daemon had become dust on the floor of that cell, _tying up loose ends_ , he'd almost said it out loud)

Now a thought that's almost painful to conceive of takes root in his head.

He's just like you.

_He's just like you._

 

*~*~*

 

The night it happens, Nico wakes up in a cold sweat in the Medici house in Florence and reaches desperately for Lontalye.

She thinks that in his dream perhaps he'd been remembering the night they were almost separated.

She almost expects to see Velayli's shining eyes in the dark of their room.

"Lonty," Nico gasps, pulling her close. "Something's wrong, Lonty. Something's wrong."

She knows.

Not what, not yet, but she _knows._

And when they do find out, through their horror and their sorrow for the sake of their _other_ Maestro, they feel a certain gratitude that he left them this one last lesson.

_Even those crimes which you consider unthinkable are things you may have to face one day._

_So don't ever expect there to be a universal point of moral obedience that no man would ever cross._

_There is always a man who will cross it. Be ready for him._

(He'd tried to impress something along those lines upon him once before, but they don't understand it until they hear the news)

And they thank him for that. Her too.

They think both of them would have been pleased to know they took that lesson from this, if nothing else.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> LIST OF DAEMONS
> 
>  
> 
> Leo—Scarlet Macaw: Silestrana
> 
> Riario—Black Maine Coon: Velayli
> 
> Lucrezia—Cuckoo (formerly a Nightingale, changed when Amelia died): Madrolore
> 
> Lorenzo—Leopard: Kalaiola
> 
> Clarice—Lion: Hilensius
> 
> Giuliano—Black Rhinoceros: Isilence
> 
> Nico—Initially a Bedlington Terrier, becomes a Komondor after the trip with Riario: Lontalye
> 
> Zoroaster—Golden Lion Tamarin: Kerrickatte
> 
> Vanessa—Bird of Paradise (Ribbon-tailed Astrapia): Sheymir
> 
> Sixtus (Alessandro)—Mute Swan: Trelantro
> 
> Sixtus (Francesco)—Snowy Owl: Jetariel
> 
> Piero—European Badger: Oroe
> 
> Andrea—Doe: Dialanya
> 
> Zita—Greater Short-Nosed Fruit Bat: Akamanthos
> 
> Dragonetti—Irish Wolfhound: Aberlynn
> 
> Dracula—Komodo Dragon, (fused with other creatures following his imprisonment): Xarella
> 
> Carlo—Arctic Fox: Chelicye
> 
> Ferrante—Red-headed Vulture: Grisendora
> 
> Alfonso—Spotted Hyena: Whelinei
> 
> Hippolyta—Chinese Pangolin: Ledo
> 
> The Turk—Deathstalker Scorpion: Ilara
> 
> Amerigo—European Herring Gull: Niofera
> 
> Ferderico—Pygmy Hippopotamus: Jedra
> 
> Caterina—Blue and Yellow Macaw: Borophoros
> 
> The Abyssinian—Flamingo: Unnamed in the text
> 
> Ima—Coral Snake: Unnamed in the text
> 
> Giulio—Unsettled: Zyllinia


End file.
